Lips Touch–Laini Taylor

Lips Touch – Laini Taylor

Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal, Supernatural

My Rating:

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?

I bought this book a little while back, it was shown in one of my Sunday Summary posts and I was so excited to own it, because I love Laini Taylor. I adored her series Daughter of Smoke and Bone and so I decided I should buy her short story collection after loving the short story she had in My True Love Gave To Me. It was not what I expected. I think after reading Taylor's short story in My True Love Gave To Me I was expecting shorter stories like she did as part of that collection, so when I was reading, the stories were not short little twenty minute escapes, they took longer and were more in depth.

One of my biggest complaints with other short story collections is that I want more, that the stories don't give me enough story, you don't have this issue with Lips Touch. There are just three stories to the collection, they are rather in depth, the first is quick and short, a taster of what's to come. And then you get two more multi-chapter ventures. One thing I must say to you is if you want nice happily ever afters, this is not the collection for you. These stories are dark, there is no good and bad, just black and white and bad choices or worse ones. The characters can be selfish and they can do the wrong thing and they are human.

After reading the DoSaB trilogy by Taylor you come to expect that nothing is going to be happy and bright, good is not clear, nor is bad. The same is true from these collections, people are just doing the best with what they are given in the stories, and you understand when people act stupidly because people are flawed.
I think my favourite part of these stories is that the explore so many different things, there are folktale elements to the stories, and look at ancient religions and there is a whole world of mythology being used in them. Taylor even acknowledges how she has taken various elements of different religions and manipulated them to how she wished to use them. Whilst it may not all be accurate, it sure makes interesting and unique storytelling.

I really enjoyed the collection, but it certainly isn't what you expect, and that can sometimes be the best thing for books. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys mythology and folktales because you get the best of both in these three stories.