This was okay. I didn’t really love the characters, I found them both a bit annoying, and it was all very predictable. I liked the premise, but few like it could have been done better.

I thought this was fun and cute. It's a sapphic romcom taking place on a B-list horror set and I am here for that.

I liked that Noa and Lilah's insecurities were shown and I thought they were both pretty relatable. It was fun to be in both of their heads and see how they view the other and really get to know them. On the other hand, it was frustrating with their insecurities - but relatable IMO. The dialogue was a little much at times and had me rolling my eyes at some phrases. It was so sweet how they found a bond over their Jewish upbringings.

I appreciated that the sexual harassment of actresses was addressed. I'm all for a stalker storyline but I wish it had been a little...more.

I'm looking forward to more from this author.

Title: I Kissed a Girl
Author: Jennet Alexander
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

🔊Song Pairing: I Kissed a Girl - Katy Perry

💭What I thought would happen:

I thought it would be about a girl crush, perhaps a new relationship between two women who haven’t been with other women before…

📖What actually happens:

Noa is starting her first real job in Hollywood. She gets to be on props and makeup for a mid-budget screamfest film, a pterodactyl attack that shames Jurassic Park. The best part of this promising gig, the star of the film…THEE final girl, Lilah Silver, and Noa’s ultimate crush!

Lilah is tired of being a B-lister actress in every gory movie where she’s running away from a monster with her tits out. She wants to be taken seriously as an actress. Lilah is secretly bi, and isn’t necessarily hiding it but hasn’t found a woman she likes and doesn’t know how her fans and Hollywood will accept it.

Noa is assigned to Lilah as her makeup artist and is supposed to look her as horror-worthy as possible. The first line that Noa speaks to Lilah…”Hi, I’m here to hurt you”…woops? Their relationship gets steamier as they spend more time together. 🤍

🗯Thoughts:

I loved Noa and Lilah’s relationship. It wasn’t too cheesy, it highlighted their insecurities and demonstrated how they were both crushing on each other but worrying that they’re falling too fast and hard.

The characters were excellent. I loved how Noa was cool and confident in the eyes of Lilah while Lilah was gorgeous, thoughtful, and more than a beauty queen in the eyes of Noa.

The conflict that occurs between the characters is quite believable between Noa and Lilah and isn’t due to miscommunication in a sense. It’s a very raw relationship built on realistic emotions.

I loved listening to this, the narrator was delightful and I hope there may be a sequel to Noa and Lilah’s story! I love books based in the movie industry. The 2 POVs are necessary and perfect!

This was a fun premise for a romcom and I loved the wlw rep! I didn’t really connect to the characters themselves, and am never really a huge fan of instalove personally. I also found some of the dialogue to be quite heavy handed, so I was having a hard time getting into it all together. I did appreciate how this book talked a lot about sexual harassment towards female entertainers/actresses, and how careful Lyla felt she had to be at all times while speaking in order to not “contribute” to the harassment. I would still recommend this book, as I think it’s just my own personal taste that didn’t connect. Definitely a fun book for people who like Meg Ryan romcoms and books with lesbian/bi rep!

I give this novel ~2.5 stars - rounding up for the gays. I KISSED A GIRL was a cute f/f adult rom-com that takes place the set of a sci-fi horror film. I didn’t necessarily dislike the romance, but the characters could have had better chemistry. Nonetheless, I will always be excited to read and review any new adult queer romances that feature characters in their early twenties.

WHAT I LOVED:
-The ownvoices Jewish rep: watching our leads find commonality in their Jewish upbringings was one of the sweetest parts of their relationship. They seemed most connected and their chemistry was best when they were talking about this.
- Queer new adult: this is self-explanatory, but there’s a huge gap in the 18-24 age range across all genres. Both characters seemed to be in their early 20s, and I think this story and each characters’ inner conflicts worked for this age range.
- Sapphics: this book had great lesbian and bi rep. Bonus points for there not being a forced outing!

WHAT I THINK COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER:
- Characters and chemistry: I really wish I cared more for the characters - both as individuals and as a couple. Everything was ~fine~ but I wasn’t completely sold. If this weren’t gay, I probably wouldn’t have connected to either character at all.
- The conflict: the plot of this book includes a sub-par stalker storyline, a silly third act breakup, and quite a bit of other unnecessary conflict. I enjoyed how the novel was set on a film set and will always root for a “we have to share a bed” scene, but that’s really it for what I liked about the plot.

Despite these qualms, I’d certainly give another queer romance novel by Jennet Alexander a chance. She has a strong voice and I can see potential in her writing.

Here was my initial thought: 'lesbian from small town michigan get famous--the land of my people'! That was my biased reason to keep reading. Generally I liked this book and found Noa particularly likable. These strong female protagonist are chasing their dreams and might even get to do it together. It was cool to read a book set on a movie set and to think about all the aspects of gore makeup. I have never read a book about a makeup artist, so that was fresh and cool!

If you are expecting a light new adult queer romance, this is not it. While this book is absolutely a coming out story, sapphic romance, cute couple etc....it also deals with some of the scary aspects of fame, seriously frustrating miscommunication and stalking. I generally do not read books which include themes like stalking since it's not really my thing, but despite that, I felt these scenes were well written overall.

I liked the audiobook, but was a little bummed the women's voices were not differentiated.

I didn't totally know what I was getting into with this book, but was pleasantly surprised by the film set setting, (especially a horror film), and the whole 'close proximity, same bed' tropes going on.

This was everything I wanted from a sapphic rom-com story, and I absolutely adored it.

Okay, so I felt very meh about this one. I think the strongest part of this book was the setting. The B-movie horror setting was really fun, and I found Noa's FX job to be super interesting to read about. I thought the jewish Rep was really nice, and I liked that it was a bonding moment for the characters, and the stalker subplot was also pretty engaging, but it is a bad sign when the subplot is more interesting than the plot-plot. I just found the romance to be kind of boring. It was insta-love which I don't necessarily think is unrealistic in this case. I also immediately fall in love with any hot person that is nice to me... but the problem with it is that it's just not really engaging. There isn't much tension, or build-up, so I found it hard to actually care about the relationship. There wasn't really much palpable chemistry; I just found myself zoning out during the kissing parts which are usually my favorite.

As for the audiobook, I found Natalie Nadus to be an enjoyable narrator. She had good, distinct voices are each of the characters which I think is hard to nail with same-sex couples. I don't think she is a new fave but she had good narration regardless!

This book was written for queer readers! I Kissed a Girl is the story of two aspiring artists- an actress and an effects artist who work together on the set of a horror movie. The book explores the character's romantic interests in each other, the queer community and the turbulence of starting a career. This story stood out because it explored multiple facets of attraction between women and hit close to home with its portrayal of living authentically as a queer woman.

Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for an alc of this book!

Lilah is cast as the "final girl" in a low budget horror movie, and Noa is getting her big break doing makeup and special affects for that movie. They immediately hit it off, but there are a lot of things conspiring to keep them apart--Lilah isn't out as bi yet, Noa's boss doesn't allow dating on sets, and something more sinister happening around the filming.

This was a great, cute and quick audiobook! I really enjoyed Lilah and Noa as characters and dual pov's. The voice actor's did a great job of distinguishing them! I liked the setting of this and seeing how behind the scenes on the horror movie was portrayed. I loved the budding romance and the adventure! Such a cute book.

Pub date: August 3, 2021

Content Warnings
Graphic: Stalking
Moderate: Sexual content

This story follows Noa, a makeup artist and special effects, and Lilah, an actress. Noa and Lilah are both working on the same movie and end up building an attraction to one another. This book has a bit of a forbidden love aspect as they are not allowed to date while working together. There are also a few subplots such as Lilah’s stalker.

Overall, I was a bit underwhelmed with the love story and build-up in this book. I couldn’t help but feel there was something missing to get me really invested in the love story of these two characters. The writing was well done, and the story moved along at a pretty good pace. I just had a hard time rooting for the two characters to get together.

By the end, I felt that this story was pretty forgettable, and it is not something that I would honestly recommend for lovers of the romance genre.

Thank you to Net Galley for the free audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

While I liked the end, overall I found this book to be underwhelming.

I did enjoy the topic and how the two characters were shown to have their own ways of dealing with stress and fear of rejection. It was a good depiction of how you can internalize outside criticism to a point of them becoming your inner voices, or how you can veer towards avoidance to deal with heavier or more emotional issues.

The first third of the book I was repeatedly having to focus - the characters didn’t seem too interesting and the dialogue in the beginning felt flat.

The book picked up towards the middle, and by the end there was enough going on to keep your attention. However it still overall felt underwhelming, and for how long the book was I didn’t feel as connected or emotionally invested to the characters as I typically would be.

One of the main characters had a stalker, and it seemed very obvious from an early enough point of the book who it was. There were repeated “gut feelings” “tingles” and overall bad vibes that were emphasized but the character ignored. And for the amount of buildup I felt like the climax of that part of the storyline was also not as dramatic so much as a bit over the top. The characters’ relationship also felt a bit flat. It was almost like proceeding from point A to B to Conflict to Resolution. Again, given the length of the book I expected to be much more invested in their relationship.

Overall once you get into it, it was a pleasant storyline and an easy read, but I wouldn’t go into it expecting a romance or characters that will stay with you long after you’re done reading the book.

This book had some fantastic rep and a lot of potential, but it was just all over the place in terms of execution.

One thing that I just didn't understand is that from the beginning, make up artist Noa is completely obsessed with actress Lilah, but Noa goes out of her way to make of every single thing that Lilah enjoys. Noa hates the fact that Lilah is an ex-beauty queen and is completely shut off from the whole idea because it's "girly". Noa also judges Lilah's intelligence because she reads smutty romance novels. Noa is just a grumpy ass main character who is just elitist, and I was sick of her BS about half way through the book.

Yeah, as I'm writing this, I am knocking down a star from 3 to 2 because this book is just not great, and I have no positive feelings about it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3/5 ⭐️s

This was a fun book to listen to while I was traveling! I enjoyed that the story took place around the filming of a horror movie. It was a unique take on a well-worn romantic plot.

Lila and Noah were each interesting characters, and I appreciated they both had their flaws. I didn’t think they had a lot of chemistry, but that didn’t take away too much from reading their interactions.

I was worried the stalker plot line wasn’t going to be done well, but the climax of that plot was framed so well in elements often see in campy horror films; I found myself really enjoying it.

Overall, this was pure fun. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a light read.

Thank you to NetGalley, Sourcebooks and Dreamscape for the ALC in exchange for an honest review

CW: stalking, blackmail, fear of coming out

I would recommend if you're looking for (SPOILERS)

-f/f hollywood romance
-workplace romance
-scary movies
-a very cute puppy
-two Jewish heroines
-forbidden romance elements

This was a cute read, but I struggled with the pacing. It was slow a lot, the book more concentrated on the plot of the film and what was going on there than the romance itself. It made it difficult to see the connection of the two MCs who didn't spend a lot time together.

Noa was very judgy which made it hard to understand why she liked Lilah. I enjoyed the secondary characters and the fun setting. This was a light read of two people trying to find their place in the world and become comfortable in their own skin. Lilah was fun and very relatable with her trust issues and nerves about coming out as bisexual.

Rating: 3
Steam: 1.5 (completely closed door).

While the story was amazing, it was hard to follow the audio at times because there was no difference in the voice the narrator gave to the characters. So when the perspective shifted from one character to the other, it wasn't easy to tell who was speaking until it was mentioned in the narrative.

However, the quality of the story made the extra focus necessary to figure out who was talking worth it. The author did a fantastic job telling the story of Noa and Lilah and their budding romance.

I would absolutely read another book written by this author, but I may not listen to another shifting perspective book narrated by this narrator.

Super, super cute! I loved both of the main characters as love interests and thought they worked well as a couple. I also really liked the stalker subplot and although it was pretty obvious what was happening from the beginning, I found it entertaining. Not my favorite book, but definitely a fun read, especially for teens or new adults.

This was so good! I adored everything about this book. It had so much going for it and I just couldn't put it down. Its no secret by now that I adore lesbian/saphic fiction so this was obviously going to be something I enjoyed but this had so much more going for it at well.
The film set and exploration of film makeup and the acknowledgment of it were just two things I loved. As a major film nerd I loved reading a book that took place on a film set it added another layer to an already great story. Then the acknowledgment of film makeup as not only part of the film but a major part or what makes it work just warms my heart. Its so rare to see those behind the cameras getting recognized so to see it in a fictional setting was a nice change.
On top of the amazing romance this book also had a fabulous little mystery holding the story together and that was a great bonus. The book didn't feel so obvious or like it followed that same basic formula so many romance do because it did have that mystery. It wasn't a huge twist but it was still fun follow along and solve.
This was honestly just a great book all around. I had a blast reading. I loved the characters and the romance just made my lesbian heart swell with love and pride. This book has so much going for it and its a bummer its not getting as much hype as it deserves so please get this book. If you love it even a fraction as much as I did you will not be disappointed!

I really wanted to like this book but it just kind of meandered and talked about nothing and had characters that I couldn't get invested in. The description and the concept were awesome but the actual book didn't deliver.

It could've been great.

Let's talk about what I liked:

- The narrator. I felt the narrator's voice. Natalie Naudus does a great job. Her voice is soothing while still adding to the awkwardness of both characters. I liked the voices she picked for both leads, and although her reading the male characters was a bit off I quickly got used to it.

-Lila! I loved Lila and her journey. She was a great choice of protagonist. I found myself relating to a lot of her struggles, especially with her feelings of being left out of certain spaces and experiences.

- There was a lot I liked about the writing. Janet Alexander writes character's voices really well. I knew who's pov I was in just based on their thought process.

Now the negative...

- Insta-love. I hate it. And it doesn't work with this story. I didn't feel any chemistry between the two leads other than attraction. I couldn't understand why they kept saying they liked each other but the interactions we saw were so dry. Especially during the beginning. Other than thinking she's cute why does Lila lose sleep over Noa on the first day? I tried hard but couldn't believe it.

- Noa. Noa, Noa, NOAH! Okay, I'll chill. But wow. I did not like Noa at all. (view spoiler) So she likes pink. Sue her. I think the story would've been vastly improved without her pov entirely because it's mostly her thoughts that ruin her character.

- The writing was kinda... eh. Not bad by any means. Like I said before, Janet Alexander isn't a bad writer by any means. With that being said the writing was very much telling and not showing. It was entirely too long for what it was. The "does she like me?" got old very quickly. I hate any type of miscommunication. Can anyone just say how they feel?

- If you're going to use a stalker plot please make it good. Or at least scare me.

All in all, I was very excited about this book. The plot grabbed me immediately but in the end, I was very underwhelmed. What could've been a great romantic thriller read more like diary entries from a high schooler... That might be good actually. I wouldn't dismiss Janet Alexander completely. There are a lot of good elements to this story. This one just isn't for me.

2/5