Six Times We Almost Kissed (And One Time We Did)
Tess Sharpe
Tate and Penny’s moms are best friends. When Penny is in an accident, Tate’s mom looks after Penny’s mom. When Tate’s mom is sick, Penny’s mom looks after her. But who looks after Penny? Tate does, but what is the feeling between them? (it’s love, of course!)
Is the title long enough? The timeline in this and the in-brackets asides made this novel not really work for me. I had trouble keeping track of whose perspective I was reading, and so I didn’t really follow who didn’t like who or not? This, combined with essentially flashbacks, made it very tricky for me to follow. Ultimately it didn’t really matter though, because it’s pretty obvious how this novel is going to end. It wouldn’t be YA if it didn’t have a happy ending!
I knocked this easy novel over in a couple of hours. I was feeling uninspired to read and I wanted something simple. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this novel, but there is nothing outstanding either. It briefly covers dealing with trauma (or rather, not dealing with it) and the implications of a long-term illness. However, it lacks details and backstory that would have helped me connect better to the characters. I sympathised with both girls, but I was never really sure why the kiss hadn’t happened the first six times?
If it’s on your library shelf, sure, read it. But I wouldn’t rush out to buy it. You know what the ending will be from the blurb, and there wasn’t enough depth for me to want to reread this. I think it had potential, but failed at producing vibrantly different characters. I am going to seek out another novel from this author because I think something from a single perspective might be perfect. 3 stars from me.
Hachette | 14 February 2023 | AU$19.99 | paperback
I didnât feel gripped by this novel. I picked up and finished a couple of non-fiction books concurrently with this one because I wasnât drawn to Felix. The way that Felix didnât seem to see love when he was looking for it felt true to me. I felt a little blindsided though by the ending, because I didnât see how Felix could be so oblivious. I donât see why a poly relationship couldnât have worked as well.
I could not bring myself to finish this book. I felt pretty grimey while reading it, and I just couldn’t get the point of it. Everything was so passionate and big that I didn’t know what the actual important parts were. Oh no, Kia has to turn to prostitution. Yes, it’s a dangerous ‘job’. She feels like she has responsibility for the boy next door, yet doesn’t invite him into her own home? So like, paying twice the rent she needs to?
I knew heading into this novel that it wouldn’t finish properly because this author has a bad habit of writing trilogies where the second book is a bit weak (
I liked Sean! Poor guy. Honestly the title and the cover made me feel a bit worried about hating it, but I empathised with Sean quite well. I was the same as Sean when Australia decided to waste money on whether we should let gay people marry or not. There’s plenty of perspectives to choose from here, and the author has done a great job of illuminating just some of the problematic attitudes in Australia. I hope we’ve come a lot further than 2017, but I’m honestly not sure.
This is the first Holocaust book I have read that has a gypsy perspective at the heart of it. I think it is unfair however that it’s the ‘forgotten’ Holocaust, because it seems as if it was very similar to Jewish perspectives. The Holocaust was attrocious for any marginalised group in Nazi Germany, and I would hope people hadn’t forgotten about others who suffered.
This book is exactly as it says, a step by step guide on how to turn good ideas into not just great but killer ideas! The author breaks down the steps into each chapter and gives you lots of business examples to relate to the steps. It’s very well written and kept me wanting to read more! There are also in real life practical questions to ask yourself at the end of each chapter to help get you started on coming up with your ideas. I always love great take-aways from books such as this, as well as a dot point summary at the end of each chapter that you can refer back to without needing to re-read the whole thing.
This is not a business type book that I normally read, but it was really interesting! The introduction is a little long and slow – mostly because it has a lot of sports which I’m not interested in. Once the book starts and gets into it though, the data is really interesting. It’s so hard to trust any data that’s on the internet, so it’s nice to have it in a book and a well presented format that is really accessible for everyone (and hopefully reliable!).
This novel was.. average. I kept reading it because I expected something to happen. I was hopeful the ending might redeeem it, but I was disappointed. It potters along throwing out tidbits about Molly’s life, and the life of her siblings/aunts/uncles/cousins and poor ?brother? who is far away in Australia. Come on! It’s not forever away any more! And I don’t see why they need to track down Molly at all. I received no sense of closure when the book was finished.
I found the illnesses that weren’t the fever particularly interesting. It seems like the moonflowers were good for the fever – but that was it! So Tessa’s experience as an apothecary was useful in more than one regard. I find it so hard to believe that people are still buying solutions that are useless – but I guess some people need to buy hope (COVID19 quacks anyone?)