Things So Complicated • A Kiss in the Dark

It all started with a kiss. Specifically, it starts with one hell of a kiss that senior Macy Atwood receives when the lights go out at a high school football game from a boy that feels familiar to her. As Macy tries to discover his identity, she'll find herself entangled in new relationships (specifically with transfer student Noah) and old (with her former crush Joel, and her friends Meredith and Ben). What she discovers will change what she thought she knew about the events of the previous year that resulted in her relationships going up in smoke, and maybe help them all move forward.

Plot? Honestly, the plot is right out of a typical teen drama on television (at least, the ones I used to watch). But that didn't particularly deter me from still wanting to discover how things were going to play out for Macy and her friends. Ciocca did a great job with the set-up, particularly with the relationships, and that's definitely part of the reason I couldn't stop reading after I'd started the book. And even though I did figure something out about the main story early on, I still was interested to see how Ciocca would actually have it play out.

Characters? I liked Macy well enough, particularly because she'd be the kind of girl I'd have gotten along with in high school. I did enjoy majority of the secondary characters as well. It was interesting to see how different these individuals were, but how they still found themselves drawn to one another - whether it was a friendship or a romantic entanglement. Unfortunately, none of these characters are particularly memorable since I wasn't able to feel a strong personal connection to any of them.

Writing? Solid, overall. As I already mentioned earlier, Ciocca does well with setting up the elements of the story, specifically characters, relationships and their shared histories (where applicable). It was clever for Ciocca to use flashbacks to reveal what exactly had gone down in junior year, as it kept the story well-paced and reeled the reader in just enough to keep them turning pages.

Overall? I do think I would have enjoyed this story even more as a younger teen reader. But I still flew through A Kiss in the Dark when I read it, since I liked the story set-up and found the plot intriguing.

A favorite photo from high school? If I were still in the Philippines, I would have access to tons of photos. I was the type of girl who took plenty, and who printed and kept them together (and still have boxes of that at home). Anyway, I thought I'd share a photo featuring my high school barkada (a Filipino term that refers to a group of friends) on the day of our high school graduation.

A Kiss in the Dark by Gina Ciocca

Publisher: Simon Pulse | Publication Date: March 6, 2018

Source: ARC received from the publisher (Thank you!)