By: Christina R.

Christina R. — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 09:22:40 +0000

Highly Recommended Read! Last summer I read Calvin Wade’s Forever is Over, and it was a book that had me preoccupied for weeks after I finished it. So far, Calvin’s second book, Kiss My Name is no exception. He has a way of creating characters that are wonderfully flawed and unpredictable, and completely believable and relatable. Refreshingly, his characters have the ability to change over the course of the narrative. While some remain stubborn and, as a result, don’t exhibit any discernible emotional growth, others actually change the way that they view the world — even if that view has been held onto tightly for most of their lives. And he captivates his audience with humor and real down-to-earth issues. It is that potential for versatility, and the ability to relate to their problems, that makes Wade’s characters fascinating and his stories interesting and entertaining.Wade employs a writing device in both of the books he’s written in which he reveals a little piece of the end of the plot at the opening of the novel. The way that he does this has you preoccupied with the information that you’ve been given throughout the entirety of the story as you gather up pieces of the big picture, but not in a distracting way. He manages to present it so that it makes you motivated to understand how the event you’ve already witnessed has come about, and it is interesting to try to theorize about what is really happening in the “glimpse to the end” without having any of the surrounding contextual information.So far the setting of Calvin’s novels has been the 80′s to the present, and he does an amazing job of creating a sense of nostalgia for his readers, even his American readers, such as myself, who may or may not understand all of the references that show up in the narrative. However, despite that potential disconnect of culture, which is probably unavoidable, as you read you still have a great sense of the time frame and get that feeling of being transported to another time.I highly recommend reading this book as well as Forever is Over, as Calvin is an excellent storyteller and both of his books have been great. I’ll be waiting for the next one!

Comments on: Kiss My Name

By: Christina R.