Kiss Me Kill Me (review)

Scarlett Wakefield doesn't give a second thought to her faithful B-list friends when she is invited to join the inner circle, the glittering children of the rich and famous, in her posh British prep school. She's even further over the moon when the boy of her fantasies kisses her at her first A-list party, but when he drops dead moments later, so does her social life. She is exiled to an even posher school in the country, this one all-female (except for the obligatory cute teenaged gardener) and run by her formidable grandmother. Fearful that she is somehow a deadly toxin who will never be able to kiss again, she sinks into a depression until she receives a strange note that intimates that the apparent death-by-kissing wasn't what it seemed. Teaming up with a menacingly fit girl, she's determined to figure out where the note came from, clear her name once and for all, and summon up the courage to kiss the gardener. Bearing the classic earmarks of murder-mystery genre fiction, the book offers a suspenseful plot and the clues well laid for the alert reader. However, the casual attitude toward murder necessary for that genre to work sits uneasily with Scarlett's teen angst over first love and second kisses; since the book lacks the breezy insouciance of Clement-Moore's Prom Dates from Hell (BCCB 7/07), the result is a jarring mismatch of emotion and genre that makes Scarlett seem callous at best, and certainly less than credible. What will be worse for some mystery fans, however, is that justice is never really served; while Scarlett has figured out means and opportunity, there is no drawing-room confrontation that establishes motive and ensures that the guilty party is punished. Still, fans of murder lite may enjoy the novelty of teen protagonists in their genre of choice.