Kiss Me First

Finished September 7

Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach

I found this novel hard to classify into a genre. The narrator is Leila, a young woman who has felt that she doesn't fit in most of her life. She was raised by her mother, but her mother was diagnosed with MS, and died when Leila was a young woman. 

The book begins with an online conversation she has with a woman called Tess, which she describes as the last conversation that she would have with her. 

The next section is dated in August 2011 where Leila is at a commune in Spain. She is living in a tent and has gone there looking for Tess. While she is there she has decided to "write an account of everything that has happened'. And that is what this novel's structure is. As a reader, I felt a bit like I'd come into the middle of a story, as Leila talks about people she's interacted with and describes her life and the situation that she entered into with Tess.

Leila hadn't gone to college, and the two made a plan for her future together. Leila would do online training for computer coding and they would sell the house and buy an apartment for her to live in when it came time for her to live by herself. 

One thing that Leila was interested in was philosophy, and she found her way to a site called Red Pill where she discussed philosophical questions. There she interacted with a man called Adrian who offered her a job he calls "Project Tess" where she will get to know Tess, a woman who wants to disappear from her life, so that Leila can interact with people Tess knows later once Tess is gone. Tess is a little older than Leila, but still a young woman, and as Leila lays out her interactions with Adrian and with Tess, we get a sense of the unusual situation that this is. 

To me, Leila seemed bright in some areas of her life, but very naive in others. She also seems to have a lack of emotions at times when it would be normal to show emotion. 

As the story unfolds, and we see Leila's business-like and organized approach to this job, we get a sense of what her own life is like and how she has trouble connecting with people in real life. 

A strange and intriguing look inside someone else's head. Some have labeled the book as mystery or suspense, and I can see aspects of that, but it is also a sort of dark character study of the narrator as we get to know so much about her and how she thinks.