REVIEW: Complex Kisses by Kim Bailey

Complex Kisses

by Kim Bailey

Publication Date: December 29, 2016

Genres: Contemporary, Romance

Read for FREE in KindleUnlimited: Amazon

When lost and living in the moment … … can you be found with just a kiss? Jamie Hartley ran away, leaving grief and heartache behind. Lost on her own. Raising a child. Her plan is simple. Make it through. Find her path. Survive. Eric Anderson walked away, abandoning plans and expectations. Living day to day. Waiting for miracles. His goal is complicated. Make it through. Find a way. Endure. In stolen moments of passion and pleasure, Jamie and Eric find reprieve from their complex lives. Together, they eases the burdens. Together, they soothe the pain. But can they recognize the future when it finds them? Here and now.

REVIEW

RATING:

For a debut novel, not bad, not bad at all. 

I am a bit conflicted with this one but when I remember that this is Kim's first published book, then I think that's ok. Because for all my concerns, I'll be the first to admit, it's all personal taste. Also, it could've been just the time when I picked this up. It was over the holidays and I suppose I wasn't ready for all these angst... dunno...

While I may have had some issues with this one, I enjoyed enough where Kim took me.

While I didn't fully connect and fall in love with the H&h, they're decent MCs. I think for starter, the timeline of the story was too short. I realize the circumstances they found themselves in tend to magnify emotions but for them to be that connected in such a short amount of time still didn't feel real enough. I also couldn't reconcile their personalities in and out of the bedroom. I think the transition was missing for me to buy the micro-aggressions (delish, if I may add) I witnessed in the bedroom. But of course, once in the bedroom, um, hello, melike! And outside of the bedroom, they're good people. See what I mean about conflicted!

While the pace dragged for me at certain point, especially in the middle, and something seemed to pull me out of the story at certain points, I just kept reading once I found my groove. It wasn't hard at all as Kim had a way for the events to flow smoothly. The whole story, outside of the prologue and epilogue, took place in a span of pretty much a week. So it was about the buildup to what they're dealing with, interspersed with details of their respective pasts.

And while some of the dialogues felt stilted, the writing as a whole was beautiful. Otherwise, I wouldn't be highlighting the way I was.

"I wonder if random points of synchronicity ever all add up to one big moment of transcendence? Maybe it's not meant to be just a single moment of perfection, maybe it'll be a series of moments of better than average."

Again, see why I'm conflicted?

Overall though, as mentioned earlier, this is a very nice effort for a debut novel. As you'll see on GR or Amazon reviews, I'm in the minority and happy to be so. I know Kim will only get better, I can already see it. She'll hone her craft and find her niche just fine.

About Kim Bailey

Kim Bailey is a Canadian author. She’s a born procrastinator and sarcasm junkie. She gets her motivation from coffee, the fact that her teenage children haven’t disowned her, and the smile on her husband’s face when she tells him “maybe”. When she was young and naïve, Kim dreamed of being a documentary filmmaker, and script writer. But when real life happened, she went to a job that actually paid her. Now she’s a customer support specialist by day and romance writer by night. Writing is something she’s always done – she has about 20 million half-started story ideas. She may also be a slight exaggerator. Kim promised herself to set her fears aside and make the dream real. She’s working on that, one day at a time.

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Thanks for dropping by!

~Leftie

(And I also own a copy)