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The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles
- Publisher: Penguin Random House
- Genre: Romance < Contemporary Romance
- Audience: Young Adult
- Pages: 448 (paperback)
Meet Rochelle Evans: pretty, popular–and never been kissed. Meet Noah Flynn: badass, volatile–and a total player. And also Elle’s best friend’s older brother… When Elle decides to run a kissing booth for the school’s Spring Carnival, she locks lips with Noah and her life is turned upside down. Her head says to keep away, but her heart wants to draw closer–this romance seems far from fairy tale and headed for heartbreak. But will Elle get her happily ever after?
“I didn’t care how bad we were for each other or that he’d be off to college soon; I just remembered that I was in love with him.”
The Kissing booth
Once a Wattpad book, always a Wattpad book.
Now, I will admit there are sometimes some real gems hidden on Wattpad, but I’ve determined this to be rare. Otherwise, most of what becomes popular enough on Wattpad to publish in print is pretty terrible writing with a mess of a plot and very shallow characters. I wholly believe it is the tropes in these books (not the characters, plot, writing, world, or anything else that matters) that makes up for the popularity of these books in the first place.
That being said, having enjoyed the easy-to-watch, rom-com movie adaptations of the first two Kissing Booths (we do not talk about the Kissing Booth 3 movie. It does not exist. Super angry about that total waste of time), I thought I might as well buy the book and give it a shot. Couldn’t be horrible if I fairly liked the movies, right?
Oh, I was so, so wrong.
The writing was terrible, complete with cringy dialogue, total secondhand-embarrassment-inducing thoughts from Elle, and several spelling and formatting mistakes in the text itself. The reason for this novel’s popularity HAD to have been because of the unrequited love of her best friend’s older brother and the slightly original Kissing Booth plot. It definitely couldn’t have been the writing.
Not only were the fundamentals of the writing a mess, but the story gave me extreme anti-feminist vibes.
The males were macho-men and the women were meek, subject to the will of the boys they liked, and literally had no backbone at all. It was downright infuriating to read, even though I don’t consider myself an overly feminist person (as in, equal rights yes, but getting mad at every small inconvenience to my gender, no).
There was a severe lack of character development.
Little to no arcs were seen nor actually followed through, and character inconsistencies were a normal occurrence. It was hard to become connected to characters when I felt as though they had no set personalities, they overreacted over things that deserved a much smaller-scale reaction (if any reaction at all), and who felt all the wrong emotions in response to certain plot events.
The plot was also very hard to believe because it was so cliché.
Implausible events continued to happen at every turn. I won’t even get into the absurdity of it.
Nevertheless, somehow I didn’t absolutely despise it. I actually was kind of entertained by it in the way that it was super easy and quick to read, and fun to smile and laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing was.
FEATURES
- Unrequited love
- Falling in love with best friend’s older brother
- Brooding Love interest
OFFICIAL rating
The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles
The Kissing Booth by Beth Reeklessimilar titles to the kissing booth
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Let’s Chat in the Comments!
Have you read any published books that were previously on Wattpad? What were they and did you enjoy them or did you dislike them? What elements of a story do you think make readers enjoy it even if the writing isn’t the best?
