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    Kiss Me First
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    Kiss Me First
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    Kiss Me First
    Audiobook10 hours

    Kiss Me First

    Written by Lottie Moggach

    Narrated by Imogen Church

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A chilling and intense first novel, the story of a solitary young woman drawn into an online world run by a charismatic web guru who entices her into impersonating a glamorous but desperate woman.

    When Leila discovers the Web site Red Pill, she feels she has finally found people who understand her. A sheltered young woman raised by her mother, Leila has often struggled to connect with the girls at school; but on Red Pill, a chat forum for ethical debate, Leila comes into her own, impressing the Web site's founder, a brilliant and elusive man named Adrian. Leila is thrilled when Adrian asks to meet her, flattered when he invites her to be part of "Project Tess." Tess is a woman Leila might never have met in real life. She is beautiful, urbane, witty, and damaged. As they e-mail, chat, and Skype, Leila becomes enveloped in the world of Tess, learning every single thing she can about this other woman-because soon, Leila will have to become her. An ingeniously plotted novel of stolen identity, Kiss Me First is brilliantly frightening about the lies we tell-to ourselves, to others, for good, and for ill.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 9, 2013
    ISBN9780385363297
    Unavailable
    Kiss Me First
    Author

    Lottie Moggach

    Lottie Moggach is a writer. Her critically acclaimed debut novel Kiss Me First was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and Specsavers National Book Awards and won the Portsmouth First Fiction Award. She lives in north London.

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    Reviews for Kiss Me First

    3.5/5

    104 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A socially awkward young women is approached by the charismatic founder of an internet discussion forum she frequents with an unusual proposition: that she take on the job of impersonating online another woman who wants to commit suicide, but doesn't want her friends and family to know she's dead.Basically, this is the story of a bunch of dysfunctional people, all of whom are doing things that are so clearly not a good idea that you just want to reach through the pages and shake them. Especially the protagonist, Leila, who is a painful -- but, I think, believable -- combination of intelligent, clueless, sympathetic, and creepy. Watching the story play out is very much like watching a slow-motion train wreck, with the same can't-look-away fascination. One could argue that the ending doesn't provide nearly enough closure, but I think it worked for me just fine.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars, really, but I can't bring myself to round up.

      This book was pleasant enough for an afternoon's read, but I felt myself let down after I'd finished it. I really feel like this book could have been a lot darker and more dangerous, and while Moggach often skirted along the idea of worse things happening, nothing ever came to fruition. It's a shame, because Lelia is such a dark character -- antisocial, brainwashed, no capacity for regret or empathy, obsessive, and she's an "angel of mercy", due to murdering her mother (who was suffering from MS), so that also makes her a hypocrite, after all of those times she says people should have agency over their own bodies.

      Lelia's character had the opportunity to go to some really dark places -- as did the character of Tess and their combined story -- but it just sort of fizzled out in the end.
    • 4/5
      Great debut for Moggach - lots of twists.
    • 4/5
      Leila is a solitary person who was looking after her mother, who had MS, up until her death. Being a solitary person she's very into the internet, and spends her time playing games and discovering forums. On one forum she is approached by Adrian to help out Tess, who wants to disappear from her life without anybody knowing. Leila agrees to basically become Tess and maintain her online presence after she's gone and sets about finding out as much information about Tess's life as she can.I kept looking at this book and couldn't decide whether I would like it or not. Eventually I gave it a go and I did like it. It's a fast-paced, quick read (I read it over two days) and it is an intriguing storyline. I did find myself thinking at the beginning that it was all very implausible but as the story progressed I became hooked and completely drawn into what was happening.This is a great debut novel and is quite dark. It's also very of its time and highlights how easy it can be to find out information about people, just from what they themselves post on the internet. Scary stuff!
    • 4/5
      A novel concept (no pun intended, haha), and well-executed (pun also unintended, come to think of it). Not only does Kiss Me First address the "right-to-die" movement and internet law, but also modern psychology. It's obvious the heroine doesn't relate to society quite normally, but whether or not there's anything "wrong" with her -- whether she's on the autism spectrum, or dangerously lonely and reliant on the Internet, or just flat out insane, is up to the reader's interpretation.

      The main character, who narrates the book, can't seem to go two pages without saying either "you see," or "as I say," which becomes tiresome; however, it occurs to me looking back that perhaps Moggach did this on purpose in order to give her protagonist a distinct voice (this theory makes more sense if you've read the book).

      Engaging fiction. I'd give it a go.
    • 3/5
      I loved the premise of this book, that someone wanted to disappear and another would impersonate her through social media. However, I found the back of the book description much more thrilling than the actual book. The narrator was so isolated that the story was told mostly like a diary - no imagery and very little dialogue. For me, the style just didn't hold my interest. In addition to that, I was expecting a bigger payoff or plot twist in the end. Overall, I was disappointed.
    • 3/5
      The premise of the story centers on a reclusive young girl who, through her interactions with an online group of "high thinkers", gets hired to assume the identity of a woman who plans to commit suicide. For reasons of her own, the suicidal woman feels that her family and friends would be far better off being gradually weaned of her presence as opposed to having to do without her cold turkey, so to speak. The majority of the story focuses on what I kept calling "BTS" i.e before the suicide, with the Lela, the reclusive girl studying and cataloging the suicidal woman, Tess's, entire life in order to pull off the impersonation once she is gone. Although the concept was interesting, the story never really grabbed me, and although I did finish the book, I felt somewhat let down by the whole thing.
    • 2/5
      I just can not take the premise of this book seriously. The dust jacket describes the book as chilling and intense! I enjoyed because the plot and characters are so implausible that I found it all pretty humorous. The book is about a lady who discovers a website for "deep philosophical thinkers" and is befriended by the websites' creator who decides she is special. Because of this he wishes that she take on the identity of a lady who wants to commit suicide to ease the suffering for her friends and relatives. To say she and the suicide lady throw themselves into this would be an understatement. For these thousands of hours of preparation and role playing she is payed so little she has to try to find a second job.. She gets into this to the points she start stalking one of the woman's ex boyfriends for a while. If you read this and don't question the plausibility I would wonder. If you read for the for its unbelievability it is enjoyable and quite a hoot!
    • 3/5
      Read from August 07 to 10, 2013I was attracted to this book because of the cover...bees/wasps seem to be a "thing" in cover art lately (The Shining Girls). In this case (and kind of with the other), it has NOTHING to do with what's inside the book. Who do those lips belong to? Certainly not the always-wearing-track-pants-and-hoodies narrator, Leila. Are they Tess's? If yes, what's with the bee? What does that have to do with anything? Did I skip over the part with the bees?The book itself was interesting. The premise is very of-the-time with Catfish and the fake girlfriend scandal in college football plus it's combined with the ethical dilemma of self-ownership and suicide (Me Before You handles that topic MUCH better though). All very interesting things for a book to cover, but the characters...The characters were annoying. There's the naive (I'm not even sure that's the right word), smart-yet-so-stupid Leila. The selfish, bipolar, but beautiful Tess (I mean, to even ASK someone else to take over your life to "protect" your family. That's incredibly selfish and cruel.) The Ayn Rand fan, Adrian (the fact that he likes the serial killer fan that is Rand says SO MUCH about this nutjob). However the fact that I kept turning the pages says a lot. I was fascinated by just how dense Leila seemed to be and I wanted to know what happened to Tess (no real resolution there though).
    • 2/5
      There comes a point in time in which one runs across that one book, which truly takes you outside of your comfort zone. It manages to challenge the way in which you view the world. Kiss Me First, by Lottie Moggach deals with deep subject matter, which manages to challenge the moral view point of its readers. Leila is the books protagonist, she is an intelligent young woman, but she is somewhat socially immature. She grew up in a sheltered home, with just herself and her mother. After the death of her mother, friendless and unable to truly exist in the real world, Leila searches for a new start. She finds that new start on Red Pill. Red Pill is a philosophical website, founded by Adrian (who is questionably inspired by the late Ayn Rand). On Red Pill, Leila is quickly promoted to the top level, which means that she is a “great thinker”. She is beyond flattered by this perceived honor, she is even more so flattered when the site’s founder reaches out to her, regarding a special project. That special project is, “Project Tess”.“Project Tess” involves Leila taking over the life of a 30 plus year old woman who wishes to commit suicide. However, she does not want her family to know that she has committed the unthinkable deed. Therefore, she wants someone to maintain an online profile for her after she is long gone from this world. Adrian convinces Leila that she would be a perfect fit, therefore, Leila agrees. It is during this section of the novel in which I began to have serious difficulties connecting with the Leila character. Her choices were quite questionable, she far too easily embarked upon taking on the identity of Tess. Tess, a woman who was obviously in need of great help, but the moment in which she agreed to help her die, Tess’ blood was in a way on Leila’s hands. Leila’s choices were baffling and troubling throughout the book. She was extremely judgmental, in fact, she turned down a potential roommate because she noticed a bible in his pocket. She also had the tendency to believe that her way was the right way and that there could be no other way.Leila was defiant in her choices, even when starting a relationship with Tess’ ex online. The unassuming man believed that he was talking to his long lost love, but unfortunately for him is was Leila. Leila, who believed that he would prefer her over Tess anyway, once she revealed the truth to him. I was also troubled by her reactions to those who questioned her decisions, especially Tess’ mother. She came across as cold, uncaring, yet easily bruised by the thoughts of others regarding the way in which she was perceived. There is something else in which Leila reveals much later in the book, regarding her mother’s death. Her revelation which further cemented my negative view of the Leila character. I do not know if Leila was meant to be a sympathetic character, because if she was, I failed to sympathize with her. She was morally corrupt, and even in the end, she still failed to recognize this fact. Kiss Me First, deals with sensitive issues such as suicide and mental illness. I wish, however, that it was handled differently. Apart of me wishes that Leila would have early on stepped in to stop the Tess debacle. I wanted her to recognize that there are right choices and wrong choices. She semi makes the right choice at the end, but only after destroying so many lives. Leila’s immaturity as a young woman could have been understandable. However, she denied herself the opportunity to grow, to learn. I desire character growth when reading a novel, there was no growth for Leila. It was a constant barrage of poor choices again and again, without considering the emotional impact which it could have on others. Would I suggest Kiss Me First to readers? Probably not, unless they were comfortable enough reading about a character with Leila’s glaring faults.
    • 4/5
      This novel is about a reclusive young woman who joins a strange philosophy website and, having 'proved herself' during debates on all kinds of topics, is chosen by the charismatic website founder to help him in a special project. A friend of his, an older woman called Tess, wants to end her life, and to avoid upsetting her friends and family, Leila is going to take over her online accounts for a time before slowly reducing her social media presence to nothing. As far as her loved ones are concerned, the naturally flighty Tess will be moving to a little island off Canada to start an idyllic new life as an art tutor. In actual fact, every photo, every update, every detail of her beautiful new home has been created by Leila using the reams of information she's carefully collected from Tess during the preceding months. So far so intriguing - until Tess's old flame, Connor, gets in touch and Leila finds herself falling in love with him...This is definitely meant to be a thriller, about obsession and ethics and our online lives. It didn't really play out as a thriller, in the end - the middle section definitely dragged a bit - but it's still a fascinating read. The sheer scale of attempting to take over someone's online existence was mind-blowing; Leila literally has to piece together Tess's entire life, covering every eventuality and every friend or family member who might get in touch, in order to avoid suspicion. It was actually frighteningly plausible, watching this very naïve girl getting sucked into her own fantasy, creating a whole new daily life for Tess in Canada in order to email and update Facebook convincingly, even orchestrating fake answerphone messages to Tess's mother when she knows there'll be no one home to pick up the phone. I watched her getting more involved with Connor, feeding her own personality into their correspondence until she's sure he's in love with Leila, not Tess, and wanted to shake her and scream, "THIS ISN'T GOING TO GO WELL FOR YOU, YOU IDIOT!"And it doesn't. Of course it doesn't. You know from the beginning that things are inevitably going to go wrong - particularly due to repeated mentions of police investigations early on - but I didn't quite put my finger on how things were going to play out until I got there, which was refreshing. The novel is told via a kind of after-the-fact account being set down by Leila after the Tess furore has died down. She's in a hippy camp in Spain trying to trace Tess's movements after 'check-out' (the day the online accounts were officially handed over), and this was where the novel dragged for me. The actual mechanics of the deception, and its impact on Leila's life, is interesting and compelling, but her meandering around the hippy camp befriending travellers and trying to get a positive ID on Tess from people who had visited the previous summer... not so much. I just wanted to get back to the main story! That said, it does all tie together in the end, more or less, so I understood why the 'present day' narrative was there too.My other major gripe with the book, and in particular with Leila, was her sheer ignorance of the world. I mean, I understand that her character is very much of my generation - she spends most of her time online, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else - and doesn't have any friends thanks to a lengthy spell in which she cared for her dying mother full-time. I get that. I think most of us can relate to her in some way, because the internet is ever-present in our lives. But she's just SO ignorant. I mean, online life can be limiting in many ways, but what the hell has she been doing on there?! I don't know about all of you, but I spend a lot of time article hopping on newspaper websites, for example. Discovering new music via YouTube. I learn things about the world, about history and culture and modern life, from the internet. Leila, on the other hand, has never heard of Virginia Woolf or The Stone Roses, and doesn't know what a didgeridoo is. She has no concept of modern vocabulary despite apparently spending her life in the world of hashtags and urban slang. She's never read newspapers or been to Topshop. She's literally the most clueless 20-something I've ever come across, fictional or not. She's meant to be an internet-dweller, not a hermit in some cave up a mountain somewhere! I thought that aspect of her character was a bit too unbelievable.What I really liked about the novel was the way it made me think about so many different issues, from so many different angles. The website Leila joins, Red Pill, is a philosophy website for debating and ethical thought, and several examples crop up in the novel even before the founder, Adrian, selects her for The Tess Project. In a lot of ways the entire book is a study in the ethics of suicide, of the right to die with dignity, of ownership over one's own body, and it definitely throws up all kinds of angles for the reader's consideration as well as Leila's. This might sound heavy-handed but it's really not - it's just one of those novels that effortlessly makes you ponder life, the universe and everything as you read. Final thoughts? I really enjoyed this novel, and definitely appreciated the fact that it found a new and unique angle from which to tackle the darker side of the immersive and occasionally all-consuming online life that so many of us lead these days. It didn't blow me away and keep me hooked quite as thoroughly as I'd hoped, but it was a fascinating read and still managed to deliver one last little gut-punch near the end just when I was least expecting it. More by Lottie Moggach, please!
    • 3/5
      An interesting and intriguing concept marred by slow pacing - the first and last thirds of the book hold all the interest and momentum. It didn’t slow so much that I stopped reading in the middle, but I did notice the difference. A lot of it is the minute detail of Tess’s fake life; Leila’s fantasy life - there’s far too much of it and it wasn’t terribly interesting. Ostensibly, Leila disapproves of Tess, mental illness or no, but there’s jealousy at the core. The book is told after the impersonation ends, and through Leila’s references to the police, you know it doesn’t end well. It puzzled me why she was searching for Tess’s body though and it isn’t explained until the end. Leila herself is puzzling. She’s a weird mix of modern and Victorian. She’s sheltered, yet savvy in some ways. She is ignorant of stuff like the meaning of the phrase “three sheets to the wind” and other stuff that is pretty common knowledge, even if you’re young. She’s oddly backwards, referring to women’s breast as bosoms, and is continually surprised by the hostility she receives once her role is revealed. Her whole infatuation with Connor was cringe-worthy. Luckily the book was interesting and I didn’t mind that she was mildly repulsive. Adrian is a mystery that is never adequately solved and I was immediately suspicious of him, but for different reasons that what we find out about him later. Also never solved is Tess’s ultimate fate. There are hints and possibilities, both of them as plausible as the other, but it’s open-ended. Not a total downer though and there’s hope for Leila, but somehow I don’t know if it will take.
    • 4/5
      I quite enjoyed this story about Leila and Tess. I cringed at some of the details of the 'Connor' situation as you knew it wasn't going to end well but I found the characters believable and although Project Tess was imaginary there was no reason why it couldn’t happen in real life. This is a scary thought but in my opinion I thought the discussions of suicide were handled well. I can see why some people might not enjoy the book, as if you had personal connections to any of the issues mentioned in the book, they were dealt with quite lightly in places and that might not be acceptable. However, if you are aware of the subject matter, to me it was an enjoyable read and the final part of the book kept me guessing to the conclusion. I listened to an audio version and I enjoyed the way the reader voiced the accents and differentiated between the characters.
    • 4/5
      KISS ME FIRST by Lottie Moggach is a smart, riveting psychological thriller that will keep the reader turning the pages long into the night.