I really enjoyed this book. I liked the story and the artwork. Recommended for 14+. It is a great story about figuring out who you are and being true to yourself. Amanda had to deal with family secrets, crushes, and accepting who sh is. It ends on a good note but not everything works out perfectly.

I appreciated that this story allows sexual orientation to be fluid and to unfold rather messily. Not everyone's orientation is neat and finite.

Kiss Number 8 definitely reminded me how messy feelings of attraction can be. Sometimes they are physical but sometimes they're from admiration or envy or a desire for emotional closeness.

Venable, Colleen AF. Kiss Number 8. First Second, 2019.

Amanda's first seven experiences with kissing haven't sold her on it being a wonderful idea, but her friends seem obsessed with it, and she is determined to find out what's so exciting about it. Her eighth kiss involves another girl and sets in motion the possibility that maybe she likes girls and not boys and maybe that's why kissing hasn't worked for her so far. Her family is holding back some secrets as well, and Amanda is determined to get to the bottom of that just as she is set on hiding her newfound crush from her family.

This is a fairly typical coming-out style story, with appropriate characterization for Amanda's teenage friends. LGBTQ+ representation is very important in all aspects of literature, including graphic novels, so I would readily purchase this book for my library's shelves, although I am not certain that it would circulate well.

Recommended for: teens
Red Flags: language, underage drug and alcohol use
Overall Rating: 3/5 stars

I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley for the purpose of review.

I really enjoyed this more than I expected to. It is a coming out story where the protagonist does not seem to realize, or purposefully denies, her sexuality until it all comes to a head approximately 3/4 of the way through the book. The one thing I would have liked to have seen here is Amanda pushing back on the reaction of her friends once her bisexuality is revealed to the school. I was very upset by Cat's reaction and surprised that there was no resolution -- even if that was Cat saying, "I can't be your friend anymore." Instead they seemed to be suddenly and completely out of each other's life. Yet, that could be the experience of some...

Text was very hard for me to read on my review copy. I'm sure it will be different in the published form, but I found a few text and speech bubbles impossible to read.