cover image Kiss & Make Up

Kiss & Make Up

Katie D. Anderson. Amazon Children’s Publishing, $16.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7614-6316-0

A kiss is but a kiss—unless 16-year-old lip gloss fanatic Emerson Taylor is the one puckering up. When Emerson kisses someone, she can see into his or her mind. Her secret gift mostly generates anxiety, until she discovers that kissing smart boys, aka “Ivys,” can help her academic performance. Emerson plans to smooch her way to better grades (a fairly depressing premise) and stay enrolled at her pricey prep school, bolstered by a supply of lip gloss from her aunt Arch, a cosmetics rep who has been raising Emerson and her sister since their mother disappeared. Roadblocks pop up as Emerson fights with her sister and her boy-crazy BFF, starts to develop a reputation (due to all her kissing), and falls in love with the nerdiest Ivy of them all. Debut author Anderson, to her credit, uses this fun premise to get at deeper issues of teenage curiosity, identity, and self-doubt, as her characters play smartly off one another, and Emerson learns that the supernatural path to success isn’t necessarily the best one. Ages 12–up. Agent: Cheryl Pientka, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. (Oct.)