Review: A Kiss in the Dark by Gina Ciocca

A Kiss in the Dark by Gina Ciocca
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this free eARC novel from Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review.

Macy is starting off senior year in a way that she never imagined: down 3 friends, not on the cheerleading team, and on the sidelines taking photos. She had everything going for her junior year with her best friends Meredith, Ben and Jadie, and she was crushing hardcore on the transfer student Joel. Homecoming was coming up, and things were looking promising when Joel finally got around to asking her to go with him.

But senior year, Meredith and Ben are not talking to her anymore, and things are ridiculously weird with Joel, who broke her trust last year. The only solid thing in her life is Jadie, who has been by her side for the whole year.

When Macy gets kissed by a mysterious guy during a short blackout in the football field, she tries to figure out who it could be. Even the new guy, Noah, is a suspect since he was close to her on the field and he's been flirting with her since he transferred to the school.

Things are not as they seem, though, and there is one particular night junior year that Macy cannot remember entirely, which makes her believe that something very major shifted the balance of her life. But no one is willing to tell her exactly what happened, so she is trying to fit the pieces together.

She just hopes that her senior year doesn't end up like her junior year: in flames.

Okay, I know I gave it two stars and I feel really bad about it, but this book was just "okay" for me. I didn't love it but I didn't hate it. The beginning was very rocky for me. So much that I almost stopped reading it. It was throwing me around and around and I couldn't distinguish which characters were who, and the going from junior year to senior year definitely was not helping. I know that this was to keep the reader guessing and to basically keep them as lost as Macy was, but it just made me mad that I couldn't figure out which character was which person in Macy's life.

Once I finally put the right characters into their proper places, I was a little better. But right off the bat, I called the major mystery. It was so obvious to me that I just wanted to shake Macy and yell at her all of the secrets that were being thrown in her face. Because it was like the sun was right in front of her, but she seemed to be in the only dark, raining cloud - that's how ignorant she was.

The second mystery was pretty good, even though I figured it out about a chapter before, but that one wasn't seen at chapter 3 like the first secret.

I did finish this book and I did enjoy the ending of it. Everything was wrapped up all nice and pretty, even though that's not how high school is at all, but I accepted it. It was just the repetition of everything that really got to me.

I think there will be tons of readers who will love this story and every agonizing teen angst that comes along, but for some reason it just wasn't for me this time. I am very grateful that I was giving the opportunity to read this as an eARC and I am definitely still going to be on the lookout for more books by Gina Ciocca!

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