melissa_keen's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I love this book, it's so lighthearted and easy to read. A perfect summer holiday novel.
megs2kool's review against another edition
3.0
Jill Mansell's books are always a cute read, but definitely one you can put down and forget about for a week before coming back to it. This one dragged on quite a lot- there was so much back and forth between characters and potential love interests that I wanted to shake a couple of them. Like I said, cute but not memorable. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
betsw's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
Long, slow, and followed a bunch of characters I barely cared about as they made dumb decisions. I usually love long books that follow several different characters as their lives become intertwined, this book just didn't do it for me. This was my first Jill Mansell book, and apparently it's an outlier, so I'll have to try some others. My biggest problem was the "romance" between an adult man and a teenager still in high school...which is treated like just one of the many relationships in the book instead of as a major problem.
Spoiler
As if that isn't bad enough, when they get found out, the teen's mom and man's wife get mad at HER for being a "slut" instead of him for preying on a teenager?? A large part of the book is spent with the mom not speaking to her daughter and wishing to reconnect, but never once thinking that maybe she should apologize to her daughter. REALLY annoyed me and ruined anything else I might have liked about those characters.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship
blancwene's review against another edition
1.0
Back when Gossip Girl was airing, my friend and I would watch it and play Relationship Bingo. Each season, we'd guess who'd hook up this time around, and then if it happened...well, you can guess the rest.
This entire book felt like Relationship Bingo. They swapped partners so often that it felt dizzying. This is real early, 90's vintage Mansell, and I just didn't find it anywhere as enjoyable as some of her later novels.
This entire book felt like Relationship Bingo. They swapped partners so often that it felt dizzying. This is real early, 90's vintage Mansell, and I just didn't find it anywhere as enjoyable as some of her later novels.
xanabertolo's review against another edition
3.0
Mais um livro típico de Jill Mansell :) Deixa-me sempre bem disposta!!
Lê-se num instantinho. Gostei :)
Lê-se num instantinho. Gostei :)
sharyn_swanepoel's review against another edition
4.0
To be honest, I was almost not going to read this one after the first chapter as I didn't like the main character.... but I kept going and in the end this was just like all her others - thoroughly enjoyable!!!
turophile's review against another edition
2.0
I’m a big Jill Mansell fan. She’s one of my favorite comfort, read under the covers authors. But I have a hard time recommending this one, a book from 1993 re-released in Digital in 2019.
Like most Mansell books, it’s chock full of quirky characters and interlacing story lines. Almost every character has a journey to go on and many become better persons and perhaps fall in love as the story goes along. Others learn to assert their independence. The central character is Izzy, an irrepressible single mom who’s been waiting her whole life for her big break. Shortly after the book begins, she’s hit by a car driven by Gina, whose husband just left her for his girlfriend whose pregnant. The cliched way for Gina’s story to play out would be for her to get back together with her husband. That doesn’t happen, but it opens the way for a story line that ruins the book for me.
The following comments are kinda-spoilerish, but the events happen toward the beginning and may bother other readers as much as they bothered me. Gina’s husband Andrew is a schlep. His character is thinly drawn and he has no redeeming qualities. It’s never clear why he drifted away from Gina to Marcy, who is another one dimensional character. What makes him worse, and the story worse, is that he sets his sights on Izzy’s 17 year old daughter Katerina and embarks on an affair with her. Yep, a 17 year old. Not sure what that amounts to in the United Kingdom, but in many states that would be illegal. This is such a turn off for me that I can’t rate this book more highly. Maybe in the intervening years since this was written we as a society have become more aware of the problematic nature (and potentially illegal nature) of such a romance. And right now, as I write this, the world is beginning to learn more about the real life sex-trafficking of underage women by Jeffrey Epstein, heightening sensitivity to this issue. But ugh, this was so unnecessary. There’s a slight acknowledgement of the problem here, but it’s more focused on the fact that Katerina’s living with Gina when this happens. Ugh, ugh, ugh. If the betrayal story line was necessary, she could have been of legal age. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
Sorry Jill, I love your books, but I can’t on this one. 2/5
Like most Mansell books, it’s chock full of quirky characters and interlacing story lines. Almost every character has a journey to go on and many become better persons and perhaps fall in love as the story goes along. Others learn to assert their independence. The central character is Izzy, an irrepressible single mom who’s been waiting her whole life for her big break. Shortly after the book begins, she’s hit by a car driven by Gina, whose husband just left her for his girlfriend whose pregnant. The cliched way for Gina’s story to play out would be for her to get back together with her husband. That doesn’t happen, but it opens the way for a story line that ruins the book for me.
The following comments are kinda-spoilerish, but the events happen toward the beginning and may bother other readers as much as they bothered me. Gina’s husband Andrew is a schlep. His character is thinly drawn and he has no redeeming qualities. It’s never clear why he drifted away from Gina to Marcy, who is another one dimensional character. What makes him worse, and the story worse, is that he sets his sights on Izzy’s 17 year old daughter Katerina and embarks on an affair with her. Yep, a 17 year old. Not sure what that amounts to in the United Kingdom, but in many states that would be illegal. This is such a turn off for me that I can’t rate this book more highly. Maybe in the intervening years since this was written we as a society have become more aware of the problematic nature (and potentially illegal nature) of such a romance. And right now, as I write this, the world is beginning to learn more about the real life sex-trafficking of underage women by Jeffrey Epstein, heightening sensitivity to this issue. But ugh, this was so unnecessary. There’s a slight acknowledgement of the problem here, but it’s more focused on the fact that Katerina’s living with Gina when this happens. Ugh, ugh, ugh. If the betrayal story line was necessary, she could have been of legal age. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
Sorry Jill, I love your books, but I can’t on this one. 2/5
elphabaj's review against another edition
3.0
Eu sou uma grande fã de Jill Mansell. Sou fã dos seus romances repletos de emoções, sorrisos e lágrimas, que nascem de paixões mirabolantes que envolvem muitas peripécias através de personagens que são, muitas vezes, caricaturas familiares ao leitor. Beijo, no entanto, é um livro diferente dos restantes que já li e de que fiz opinião aqui no blogue. Beijo é um livro com maior seriedade, um livro em que as personagens, entre os dramas e a alegria habitual, nos revelam um lado menos positivo do ser humano e, talvez por isso, creio, um livro estranho ao público habitual de Jill Mansell.
Um dos pontos fortes desta autora, talvez até o seu maior atributo, reside nas caracterizações peculiares que faz das suas personagens que, do extravagante ao comum, têm semelhanças com a realidade, regra geral para o bem, e aqui também para o mal. Assim, diversificando o seu enredo, estamos uma vez mais perante um elenco extenso, quase absurdamente extenso, em que qualidades e defeitos vão sendo espelhados durante o desenvolvimento e, em particular, através das singulares personagens principais Izzy, Kat e Gina, todas elas interessantes e repudiantes, todas elas muito diferentes entre si.
Opinião completa em: http://historiasdeelphaba.blogspot.pt/2013/06/beijo-jill-mansell-opiniao.html
Um dos pontos fortes desta autora, talvez até o seu maior atributo, reside nas caracterizações peculiares que faz das suas personagens que, do extravagante ao comum, têm semelhanças com a realidade, regra geral para o bem, e aqui também para o mal. Assim, diversificando o seu enredo, estamos uma vez mais perante um elenco extenso, quase absurdamente extenso, em que qualidades e defeitos vão sendo espelhados durante o desenvolvimento e, em particular, através das singulares personagens principais Izzy, Kat e Gina, todas elas interessantes e repudiantes, todas elas muito diferentes entre si.
Opinião completa em: http://historiasdeelphaba.blogspot.pt/2013/06/beijo-jill-mansell-opiniao.html
whatjenreads's review against another edition
2.0
This appears to be a re-release of an older Jill Mansell and unfortunately, it’s obvious. I love her writing for good beach reads but this one just didn’t work for me. The writing is dry and stilted and I never connected with the characters. It’s very wordy and could use a good editing. Thank you to the publisher for the free review copy in exchange for my honest review.