Your Last First Kiss
by Avery Maxwell
From Wednesday Girl to Forever Girl
When the highlighted quotes and passages in a book span every chapter, and you have trouble choosing exactly which ones to print for your reading journal because you want to include them all but you don’t have that much space on the spread, you know you’ve found a forever book. Your Last First Kiss by Avery Maxwell is one of those books.
Your Last First Kiss (YLFK) brings beautiful emotional depth with fantastic elements of humor, blending them together to paint the perfect picture of how life is far from picture perfect. It's real and honest. And yes, it's deep and has levels of emotional intensity some may be uncomfortable with. But a good story—no, a great story—should make us uncomfortable with things. And make us think and feel all the emotions. Because when it comes down to it, those emotions are all important to really reach a reader’s soul. And YLFK reached my freaking soul!
Maxwell infuses Penny and Dillon’s story with wonderful moments of light and levity. Beyond the connection and pull Penny and Dillon feel for each other—and, whew! Is there ever some intense connection there—humor and laugh-out-loud encounters between characters that mirror banter between close siblings abound throughout. And every encounter, every conversation, awakens the realization and recognition in the characters of how life should and can be, even between and among found family, which is sometimes tighter and more connected than blood relatives.
Both Dillon and Penny have their own mess and chaos to manage, whether it’s the physical and mental scars of a marriage to a monster or being brought up by them. I’ve never experienced what these characters did, and I still felt their pain, their passion, their conflict, and their triumphs. Watching Dillon fall first and struggle to be accepted as Penny deals with the turmoil she’s immersed in daily, and having it play out so vividly in my mind, is a shining example of how fiction can be so real. Their words sink deep into a reader's heart, soul, consciousness, until that reader feels like a true participant in their lives.
But this isn’t even a story about two people. It’s a story about family and community. Maxwell writes supporting characters who create a sense of intensely interwoven togetherness and interdependence, who lay the foundation and build the platform for the main characters to bond and find their forever. The good (Miller), the bad (Eddy), and even the ugly truth of life's consequences for bad actions and behavior are essential and have a solid place throughout the plot.
All of this to say, readers are not just getting a pretty picture with some angst leading to an eventual HEA. They are going to be immersed in multiple and ever-evolving emotions. Confronted with lessons in coming to terms with things in and out of your control. Enlightened by characters intent on finding and building a family. Challenged by things that aren't always pretty or perfect but, with the right people at your side, can be pretty imperfectly perfect. And ultimately understanding the heartache in heartbreak, and find that the journey back can be difficult and painful, but so worth it.
Your Last First Kiss is a standalone read in Maxwell’s literary world. There will be some familiar names and faces, but they will only encourage a new reader to go back to her backlist while not taking anything away from YLFK. Oh, and Miller. Yeah, Miller. Miller is mine. Just kidding. But, not really. ;-)
