Forever Obsession: Lips Touch, Three Times

ISBN: 0545055857
Pages: 266

Source: Own

Appearance:

Summary:

Three tales of supernatural love, each pivoting on a kiss that is no mere kiss, but an action with profound consequences for the kissers' souls:
Goblin Fruit
In Victorian times, goblin men had only to offer young girls sumptuous fruits to tempt them to sell their souls. But what does it take to tempt today's savvy girls?
Spicy Little Curses
A demon and the ambassador to Hell tussle over the soul of a beautiful English girl in India. Matters become complicated when she falls in love and decides to test her curse.
Hatchling
Six days before Esme's fourteenth birthday, her left eye turns from brown to blue. She little suspects what the change heralds, but her small safe life begins to unravel at once. What does the beautiful, fanged man want with her, and how is her fate connected to a mysterious race of demons?

Hey everyone! So I recently picked up a new Laini Taylor book called Lips Touch: Three Times which is a novella bind up of three different stories. The illustrations in this book are absolutely beautiful and each story is really unique but they share a common theme: a deadly kiss. Without further ado, let's get into the reviews~

Goblin Fruit

This was probably my least favorite out of all the stories. It was short, a bit under developed, and just not that interesting. Our main character is a gypsy girl who longs for a normal life. Her family believes in goblins and her grandmother saved her younger sister from the grasps of the evil goblins. The goblins in this story possessed a type of fruit that once someone takes a bite they become addicted and want more. The only way they can get more is if they go to goblins and the goblins only want one thing: their soul. Our MC wants a normal life, she wants to be noticed by someone, she wants to live. So the goblins get super fancy and one of them shifts into a handsome young man. I'm pretty sure most of us can predict what's going to happen and I really wanted to bang my head at how naive she was, even after her grandmother's ghost told her to run away.

Spicy Little Curses

This was my favorite out of the stories. It's based off of the story of Orpheus, loosely. In India, there's a widow who everyone knows as the Old Bitch. Sorry, I don't usually curse, but that's her actual name. Her job is to carry the souls of the dead to the underworld where they will be judged. In the underworld there is a demon who enjoys the deaths of innocent. After an earthquake kills 20 something children, the demon strikes a bargain with the Old B . He allows her to save all the children and in return he gets to curse one beautiful girl with the voice of death. She reluctantly agrees and warns the girl to never say a single word. Years pass and the girl never speaks, then a man walks into the picture, a young soldier. Love happens, and the girl decides that if he asks her to marry him, her first word ever will be Yes.

Spicy Little Curses was intriguing and held my attention throughout the story. I loved the development of the story and the connections to Orpheus. In a short period of time, it had me sitting at the edge of my seat, especially towards the end.

Hatchling

This was one heck of a complex and confusing story. I would have loved it a lot more if it was longer and more detailed/explained, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. One day, Esme wakes up to find that one of her eyes is now a pale blue color. Upon seeing it, her mother freaks and they run away. Unbeknownst to Esme, her mother is from a world of dark beasts, their queen was her mother's foster parent and she was bred for her beautiful red hair which the queen had a special liking to. The story is so complex with different aspects of magic and mythology. It weaves the past and present together and at times I struggled to catch up with the different twists. I have to say that I definitely really liked the story and my only problem with it was I wish it could have been a full blown novel. Maybe with dual perspectives of the past and present.

OVERALL, this was a pretty good bind up. It definitely retained Laini Taylor's beautiful writing and her ability to create interesting and complex stories. My one gripe with this book is only the first story which I didn't like at all. Other than that, it was pretty decent.