{Blog Tour} Review+Excerpt+Giveaway: My Last Kiss

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Title: My Last Kiss
Author: Bethany Neal
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: June 10th 2014

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What if your last kiss was with the wrong boy? 

Cassidy Haines remembers her first kiss vividly. It was on the old covered bridge the summer before her freshman year with her boyfriend of three years, Ethan Keys. But her last kiss--the one she shared with someone at her seventeenth birthday party the night she died--is a blur. Cassidy is trapped in the living world, not only mourning the loss of her human body, but left with the grim suspicion that her untimely death wasn't a suicide as everyone assumes. She can't remember anything from the weeks leading up to her birthday and she's worried that she may have betrayed her boyfriend. 

If Cassidy is to uncover the truth about that fateful night and make amends with the only boy she'll ever love, she must face her past and all the decisions she made--good and bad--that led to her last kiss.

Bethany Neal's suspenseful debut novel is about the power of first love and the haunting lies that threaten to tear it apart.

My Thoughts

I’d be keeping this review short because:

1. Hello, summer job. It’s taking up my whole day, and I’m so tired when I get home that I barely do anything at night. HUHU.
2. I’m completely speechless with this book.

At the beginning of the novel, I felt that it was somehow boring, and I kept on thinking that this is like If I Stay meets Before I Fall, wherein the ghost looms around and is looking for answers. Or, maybe that’s just me. Anyhow, as I continued to read on, I realised that this is unique in its own way.

A lot of people suspected Cassidy committed suicide, but that seemingly isn’t the case. Cassidy remains as a ghost, but she doesn’t remember anything a few weeks before her birthday. She doesn’t even have any recollection on how she died.

Cassidy got a little bit annoying and whiney at some points, but I absolutely love Aimee and Ethan. They stuck up for her even if she’s already dead, and they’re the one who never turned their back on Cassidy. Cassidy and Ethan were also cute together, and their relationship was realistic.

Reading this has continuously made me think, and it made me feel like I’m also investigating on Cassidy’s death based on the clues and information that Cassidy remembers and discovers.  It has kept me on the toes, and I couldn’t just put the book down. It just makes me want to keep on reading, and to find out who the assailant was. One moment I thought I got it guessed correctly already, but the next thing I know, something contradicts my thought entirely.

My Last Kiss is so heartbreaking yet heartwarming at the same time. It just shows how powerful and great first love is because it’ll always be a part of our lives, no matter what happens. I’m glad that each one of the characters were able to see their mistakes and be able to say goodbye. It was touching, yet bittersweet.

My Rating

Excerpt

It’s snowing or maybe it’s raining. . . no, it’s snowing. I can feel the wet flakes gathering in the corners of my eyes, melting down my cheeks like tears. The warmth from the sun I felt on my face only an instant before is gone. When I blink, the only things I see are blotchy white bits of trees and clouds and lights. Where are those lights coming from? I stumble onto my feet and my legs feel Jell-O-y, like I’ve been swimming for a really long time and now the ground feels too rigid.

I take one step and suddenly my whole body stings. I fall to my knees and clutch my middle. The worst pain I’ve ever felt invades my limbs, like when your foot falls asleep except it’s my entire body and it’s epically stronger. I’m screaming and gripping my sides, writhing in the fluffy white snow. And then the pain stops; as fast as it came, it stops. Filled with relief, I do a quick once-over of my body. I even pinch my arm to check if I’m dreaming. How dumb is that?

I manage to open my eyes enough to see a silhouette standing above the waterline among the trees in Dover Park. He—at least I think it’s a he—is staring at me, but not at me, me. He’s staring at the bloody, twisted mess of me on the rocks along the riverbank.

Why are there two of me?! And how did I get in the river?

I run toward my other, mangled body. I must be having a nightmare—but it’s like there’s a force field around me. I sort of melt into the air, then get flung back. I land on my butt in a massive snowbank at the water’s edge, waiting to feel the cold from sitting in waist-deep snow.

A jagged chunk of ice floats by, sparkling in the early-morning moonlight.

I still haven’t felt the cold.

The silhouette is talking now. I hear him, but the words are muffled as if he’s talking underwater. I press my hands to the sides of my face and squeeze my eyes shut, concentrating. His voice comes clearer. . . He’s telling me he didn’t mean to.

Mean to what?

Now he’s telling me this isn’t how it was supposed to go. This is her fault.

Is “her” me?

I open my eyes to check if he’s talking to me, me. He’s not. I look at my Other body, broken and folded in ways a body should never bend over a mound of gray rocks. In one of my Other hands I’m holding something, maybe a piece of paper, but I can’t see it clearly. Snow piles high again around my eyes and my cheeks and now on my shoulders. It comes down, harder and harder, until I feel buried in it. I can’t even see it and I’m buried in it so deep that I can’t breathe.

Slowly a thought creeps in, settles in the front of my mind. It tugs at something I feel like I know but can’t quite remember. I open my mouth to speak it, but I don’t see my breath the way I should in early March. I glance up at the silhouette. He’s crying or maybe he’s yelling; either way, I can see his breath.

I’m not breathing. I don’t need to. The words float past my lips like a rehearsed chorus: “I’m dead.”

About the Author

Bethany Neal writes young-adult novels with a little dark side and a lot of kissing! She is obsessed with (but not limited to): nail polish, ginormous rings, pigs, pickles, and dessert. 

You can find her locked in her Writertorium for insane amounts of time. But, hey, insanity is fun! My Last Kiss is her first novel.

Giveaway

Giveaway is open to US/CAN Only | Must be 13 or older to enter 

Win (1) signed hardback of My Last Kiss + a Swag Pack ( MLK Button, MLK Notebook, & Cassidy's watermelon lip gloss)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour co-hosted by Bethany Neal and The Fantastic Flying Book Club