Book Review - Lips Touch: Three Times

Lips Touch: Three Times
Author: Laini Taylor
Anthology
Genres: Paranormal, Fantasy | Young Adult
Release Date: 24th October 2013
Publishers: Hodder & Stoughton
No. Pages: 256
Source: Review Copy - Hodder & Stoughton
Rating: 
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Three tales of supernatural love, each pivoting on a kiss that is no mere kiss, but an action with profound consequences for the kissers' souls:

Goblin Fruit
In Victorian times, goblin men had only to offer young girls sumptuous fruits to tempt them to sell their souls. But what does it take to tempt today's savvy girls?

Spicy Little Curses
A demon and the ambassador to Hell tussle over the soul of a beautiful English girl in India. Matters become complicated when she falls in love and decides to test her curse.

Hatchling
Six days before Esme's fourteenth birthday, her left eye turns from brown to blue. She little suspects what the change heralds, but her small safe life begins to unravel at once. What does the beautiful, fanged man want with her, and how is her fate connected to a mysterious race of demons?

Though I have only read the first book of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, I've been a fan of Laini Taylor's writing from the very first chapter of that book. She seems to have this flare for creating a creepy but beautiful story, and with her Lips Touch short stories book, I must admit, to start off with I was a little unsure. I've known about it for a few years now and had it on my TBR on goodreads for a while but when I saw it on BookBridgr, I knew I had to at least try to request it.

This books is made up of 3 short stories, Goblin Fruit, Spicy Little Curses Such As These and Hatchling. All from a young girl's point of view but each completely different. Goblin Fruit fallows a girl with a strange family, someone who has been told to stay away from ever eating out of season fruit, but when a mysterious new boy turns up at her school she begins to struggle between what she's been told all her life and what she wants.

Spicy Little Curses Such As These is about a girl who was blessed as baby with an amazing singing voice, but cursed with the power to kill using said voice. She has been silent all her life, finding other ways to communicate, but when she is face with what could be true love she is desperate to utter some words, if only once. And then with have Hatchling, a story about a seemingly ordinary girl who's eye's change just before her 14th birthday and she soon learns that there are horrible things hidden behind eye sight.

Though I really liked all of the stories, I think for me my favourite had to be Spicy Little Curses Such As These. I absolutely loved the idea behind the story and I would kill for a full length book of this. It did however work perfectly as a short story, because everything flowed really well and if she can do that in such short amount of pages I can imagine my mind would be full on blown away with more.

If I had to sum each of the stories up with one work I think Goblin Fruit would be lust, Spicy Little Curses Such As These would be love and Hatchling would be dark. The reason for this would be because the first story I found to be a little bit too much instant love, don't get me wrong I know it was a short story and Laini wouldn't have had a lot of time to get the feelings across, but it all happened a little too quick. Spicy Little Curses was all set around love, in a romance sense and just a love of other human beings. And Hatchling, well that was the darkest of them all and it was brilliant.

All in all, I really enjoyed reading it, every story left you wanting more and I will admit that I would probably read anything she has wrote, I'm not a fan of short stories but even though I knew they would last more than 50-100 pages, I was so engrossed with what was going on that I was surprised it was finished. And just look at these illustrations in it.