[Review] The First Kiss Hypothesis - Christina Mandelski

Summary: Nora Reid believes scientific laws control everything, even love. With her grandparents’ epic first kiss story cemented in her brain, Nora develops a hypothesis she’s determined to prove:for each person in the world, there is exactly one other person, and at first kiss, they’ll experience an immediate and intense reaction.

But after four years of zero-reaction kisses, she comes up with a new theory: maybe that pesky crush on her stunningly hot best friend Eli Costas is skewing her results.

She needs to get rid of him, and fast.

Eli Costas is an injury-prone lacrosse star with a problem—the one chance he had at winning over the girl next door resulted in the most epically sucktastic first kiss ever. And now she’s...trying to get rid of him? Hell no. It’s time to disprove her theory and show her exactly what she’s missing.

Game. On. (Pub Date: Nov 06, 2017)


Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

This is another cute YA novel with the standard one could expected from Entangled Crush. I'll never say enough how much I live for their releases. I always feel sad when I can't pick more to review but I always make sure to find room at least one. I don't regret picking this one up.

Nora had a hypothesis she's formed based on the story of how her grandmother knew her grandfather would be the person with whom she's live happily for forty years. It's all about the first kiss; you just know it if that person is just a crush doomed to disappointment like her parents, or if he's the right one. In practice, she has kissed almost every boy at school and obtained no results. She suspects her perception has been altered to along-lasting crush over her best friend Eli Costas. She doesn't know it but now Eli is determined to disprove her theory.

This was fun, cute. A delight to read! I had just finished Love, Life and the List, which is also about best friends falling in love so I was afraid it could be a bad idea but I could only read it now so I had to risk it. Yes, this book passed.

Of course, a lot of the story is the expected cliché. But as stubborn as Nora was about her theory, her adventures were quite fun. I kept cheering for things to work out. I appreciated the subtle discussions on choosing universities, overcoming fears, seeking for your parents' approval. They were well mixed into the story and brought up good advices for the teenage readers.

Eli didn't charm me much, and I thought the climax was a little silly—why are most YA writers so lazy with that? However, all that wasn't enough to spoil my guilt pleasure. Christina Mandelski is a name to watch for. So if you want some upbeat YA contemporary romance, it's a good pick for this Fall.

Rating: 3 out of 5.