Kiss Crush Collide

by Christina Meredith

Overview

Kiss
What Leah did—only she really shouldn’t have—one hot night at a country club party.

Crush
What Leah has—only she really shouldn’t have—on the guy with the green eyes, the guy who is not her perfect boyfriend, the guy who does not fit in her picture-perfect life, the guy her sisters will only mock and her mother will never approve of. Not in a million years.

Collide
What happens when everything you always thought you wanted—having cool friends, being class valedictorian and homecoming queen—runs smack into everything it turns out you really do want.

Kiss. Crush. Collide.
For Leah and Porter, summer is only the beginning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062062260
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/27/2011
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Christina Meredith has always wondered, "How fun is it to drive if you always know exactly where you're going to end up?" She lives in Sausalito, California. This is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 9 Up—Leah Johnson has it all: looks, popularity, money, and great grades. The youngest of three sisters, she has never had to work for anything. Homecoming Queen, valedictorian, girlfriend of the school's quarterback—all of these things have been or will be handed to Leah simply because of who she is and what Yorke and Freddie had gotten before her. While working at the country club as a lifeguard the summer before her senior year, she meets Porter, and nothing is the same. He is everything Shane isn't—sexy, spontaneous, a question mark. Best of all, he's most likely not on the "approved list" of acceptable boyfriends. Naturally, they begin a torrid love affair. Ultimately and unimaginatively, Leah must decide to break it off with Shane and go public with her new beau or continue to keep up the charade she's been living. While teen girls might be swept up by Porter's character and the steamy cover, this novel is trite and Leah is very unlikable. She is well aware of how privileged she is, and she loves herself even more for it. When younger girls are staring at her in awe at the pool, she sighs, "You'd think I'd be used to it by now." Yeah, it's hard for Leah to be her own person because people assume she will do everything her sisters have done. And yes, her mom seems way more focused on appearances than on Leah's actual happiness, but none of that will make readers care about her or her "problems." Point fans of teen romance in the direction of books by Sarah Dessen or Susan Colasanti instead.—Lauren Newman, Northern Burlington County Regional Middle School, Columbus, NJ

School Library Journal

High school junior Leah comes from a quintessentially perfect family: her parents are high school sweethearts, her older sisters are both gorgeous valedictorians, and their family is well-off and well connected. With Leah’s oldest sister, Yorke, recently engaged, and middle sister, Freddie, celebrating her graduation, Leah has had enough of the many expectations that weigh on her. When Leah meets Porter, the handsome bad boy who parks cars at her family’s country club, she sees the perfect opportunity to break away from her family and her tried and true boyfriend, Shane. Writing from Leah’s first-person perspective, debut author Meredith spends an inordinate amount of time on the details of the charmed life Leah chafes against and her romantic yearnings, which are sometimes described in queasy terms (“But what my boyfriend spent more than twelve months achieving inch by inch in my bedroom, Porter had plundered in a few sweaty minutes”). The romance and intrigue will draw readers, but the underdeveloped characters and their flattened emotions drain the story of intensity and sizzle. Ages 13–up. Agent: The Chudney Agency. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Those feeling confined by family and looking for a little bad-boy breakaway action will get some vicarious thrills here.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

“Meredith displays a great ear for teen interior monologues. . . . Readers will delight in Leah’s transformation from wealthy, privileged brat to a young woman ready to take chances and live her own life.” — ALA Booklist

From the Publisher

Those feeling confined by family and looking for a little bad-boy breakaway action will get some vicarious thrills here.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Meredith displays a great ear for teen interior monologues. . . . Readers will delight in Leah’s transformation from wealthy, privileged brat to a young woman ready to take chances and live her own life.

ALA Booklist

Those feeling confined by family and looking for a little bad-boy breakaway action will get some vicarious thrills here.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Those feeling confined by family and looking for a little bad-boy breakaway action will get some vicarious thrills here.

The Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books

The summer before her senior year of high school, a girl who seemingly has it all--money, looks, smarts and social position--falls for a dazzlingly handsome but mildly unsuitable boy. Leah Johnson is not the captain of her own ship. Although she knows how to drive, Leah prefers to let others take the wheel. Without much effort or thought, she drifts along in the wake of her perfect sisters, assuming, like the Johnson she is, that she'll be homecoming queen and then valedictorian. Although the pressure to be just like her sisters causes some minor chafing, and she's indifferent to the charms of her handsome, wealthy, athletic boyfriend, it's a dream life, and it never occurs to Leah not to meet everyone's expectations. Until she falls for Jon Duffy, a boy who doesn't quite fit the expected mold. This overwhelming rush of feeling wakes Leah up, and Duffy becomes the catalyst she needs to look at herself and her life choices in a different light. It's a fine premise, but her struggle is tepid, and Leah is so insipid and so completely disconnected from the wider world that the sympathy she generates is muted. Although the most intriguing thread of the book is familial, this tame G-rated story will appeal largely to girls who enjoy romances. (Fiction. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews