Book #18 for my #100BooksChallenge. Thank you to Love Books Tours for my free review copy, all opinions are my own.

Blurb 

Gordon knows what Gabby wants but he hates to do what he’s told; Chrissy stalks the internet to find what her fiance wouldn’t give her; three friends reunite during a heatwave and their evening gets better and better, until it doesn’t.

In these relationship tales, many are burned by their pasts while scanning their horizons… A woman wonders if passing strangers have a better sex-face than her boyfriend; a birthday meal goes sour at the offer of no-strings dessert.

Navigating the on and offline worlds of pairing up, this spiky collection of short stories delves deep, with dark humour, into what it takes to strap on a smile through thirty-something failure and make human connections in the modern age.

Amazon – https://amzn.to/38Vkdle

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37658478-kissing-

Four Bold Stars!

From reading the blurb I was really keen to get stuck in, I didn’t really know what to expect. The author has a very distinct writing style, I had to get into it to connect with the characters and stories. Once I did it was a smooth, entertaining, and refreshingly different read. I also was convinced that she is a British writer, from the way the characters spoke and the banter, but the first story I felt was set in the USA from reference to things. Either way none of this mattered it was just nice to ‘get’ the sense of humour and banter, the first story was laugh out loud funny for me. It was a good start to the book! Each story is different in terms of the journey you go on with the characters, generally I enjoyed them all and would recommend these short stories to all those who love women’s fiction. In particular stories around falling in and out of love, and the rocky and sometimes amusing road of dating, from a female point of view. Four stars, I really enjoyed the refreshingly different themes and characters.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate Tough is a fiction writer and visual poet.

Her novel, Keep Walking, Rhona Beech (Abacus, 2019) is available from all usual outlets. It’s the retitled second edition of, Head for the Edge, Keep Walking (Cargo) which has had five stars on Amazon since 2014. The book is a funny and moving account of how a thirty-something office worker in Glasgow, with a clumsy tendency to speak her mind, puts her life back together after it spectacularly falls apart.

Readers have noted that the novel reminds them of a book about someone called Eleanor Oliphant, although Kate’s novel appeared prior to that one, in 2014, when it got good attention in the Scottish media. It’s great that readers can enjoy both books and a bonus that people who like one character have an opportunity to discover the other one.

Kate’s poetry pamphlet, tilt-shift, was Runner Up in the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, 2017 and her piece, ‘People Made Glasgow’, was selected as a Best Scottish Poem 2016. Recently, her work was included in Makar/Unmakar: Twelve Contemporary Poets in Scotland and she’s an invited poet at STANZA in 2021. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow.

Last year Kate adopted a cat with very long tail who shares his name with the Prime Minister of Britain – the rescue centre gave him that name – but now that she knows him better (the cat, not the Prime Minister) she’d have chosen the name Rocket, because of the way he shoots from underneath furniture at unbelievable speeds.

Kate understands that life isn’t an easy ride and she lives in perpetual awe of her fellow humans; getting out of bed each day and getting involved. On a general basis, if she sees the sun rising and swims lengths in a tide pool, then its not a bad day.

For occasional updates from the author about new work, writing tips and audio clips, subscribe via the button on Kate’s website at www.katetough.com

Amazon – https://amzn.to/38Vkdle

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37658478-kissing-