Lips Touch Three Times by Laini Taylor

When I started reading this book, I didn’t realize that it was a collection of three short stories (or three quite long stories or very short novels is more like how they felt). The first story was so engaging that I hated for it to end and was worried that the next story wouldn’t pull me in – but, I shouldn’t have worried because the next story and the third story pulled me in just the same. The stories bring you into worlds where humans must make deals with the devils — souls and happiness in the balance. Teenage girls are at the center of each story – all of them trying to lead to regular lives while their families harbor dreadful secrets that make them anything but “normal.”

In the first story we meet a girl who longs to be noticed and popular when she finally meets a gorgeous boy who likes HER and when he offers her everything that her grandmother warned her about her entire life, she’s not sure she cares…In the second story, a deal is made in Hell to save the lives of hundreds of children in exchange for a curse on one baby born who must not ever make a sound, for her voice will kills anyone that hears it. We meet this girl when she is grown, yearning to sing, and beginning to doubt if the curse is real….In the final story a mother has managed to hide a dreadful past from her daughter but her daughter turns 17 and wakes up to the sounds of howling wolves, one of her eyes a different color, and memories that aren’t her own and both of them are suddenly on the ran with the past revealed and horrors of the future before them…

I would only recommend this to high school kids and wish that the title was better…also, in this proof copy it looks like there are plans for extensive artwork that I am not sure are necessary, but obviously cannot judge since they aren’t there yet. However, from someone who found Twilight to go on too long and be annoyingly predictable (Dare I admit this? And I only read the first one…), these tales are anything but. Definitely recommend them to teens looking for that “horror-meets-fantasy-meets-romance” experience.

Amy Kaplan, Briarcliff Manor