Review: Kissing Shakespeare by Pamela Mingle

Title: Kissing Shakespeare
Author: Pamela Mingle
Genre: YA - Contemporary

"A romantic time travel story that's ideal for fans of novels by Meg Cabot and Donna Jo Napoli--and, of course, Shakespeare.
Miranda has Shakespeare in her blood: she hopes one day to become a Shakespearean actor like her famous parents. At least, she does until her disastrous performance in her school's staging of The Taming of the Shrew. Humiliated, Miranda skips the opening-night party. All she wants to do is hide.

Fellow cast member, Stephen Langford, has other plans for Miranda. When he steps out of the backstage shadows and asks if she'd like to meetShakespeare, Miranda thinks he's a total nutcase. But before she can object, Stephen whisks her back to 16th century England—the world Stephen's really from. He wants Miranda to use her acting talents and modern-day charms on the young Will Shakespeare. Without her help, Stephen claims, the world will lost its greatest playwright.

Miranda isn't convinced she's the girl for the job. Why would Shakespeare care about her? And just who is this infuriating time traveler, Stephen Langford? Reluctantly, she agrees to help, knowing that it's her only chance of getting back to the present and her "real" life. What Miranda doesn't bargain for is finding true love . . . with no acting required." ~See it on Goodreads

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It’s no secret that I’m a huge Shakespeare fan, so of course when I came across this book I was immediately intrigued. The premise sounded promising and between that and the cover I was really looking forward to starting it. But sadly this book just didn’t make the cut for me at all. 

I always hate when I read a book and just really don’t like anything about it, I hate writing negative reviews *sad face* I was actually kind of putting off writing my review for this book because of that. But I always want to give my honest opinion so if that means having to write the occasional negative review, then unfortunately that’s what has to happen.

I really couldn’t form any kind of connection with the main character, Miranda. You don’t get to know her or find out what makes her tick because there’s no history/backstory for her character, like at all. I’m one of those people that just loves a really well crafted character, and a characters backstory and development are two major things that allow you to make a connection with them. So the fact that the characterization in this book was non-existent was really disappointing to me. You’re just kind of thrust into the story and there’s a lot of action from the start but not really any explanation for it. I also had quite a few unanswered questions due to sketchy areas in the plot, like the fact that Stephen (weirdo guy) was obviously quite strange but no one seemed to notice it (which is kind of unrealistic because who soesn’t notice things like that?? especially if the person is new there). And there were just sometimes where I was just plain confused.

One of the things that bothered me the most would be how Miranda is pretty much forced into this crazy scheme to try and seduce Shakespeare and she just lets herself be bullied into doing it by the guy who basically abducted her.. (really?!) the next big problem I had was the fact that the main romantic focus is on the relationship between Miranda and Stephen (the afore mentioned weirdo guy that abducts Miranda). From reading the synopsis and judging by the title I was under the impression that the romance would involve Shakespeare but apparently that’s not the case and Miranda and Stephen are the romantic couple. But really who in their right mind would date someone who’s treated them the way he treats her?!

The writing itself wasn’t really the best and the dialogue between the characters started to come off as slightly corny and was too predictable. It just lacked that certain spark that I was hoping for and itjust wasn’t what I was expecting. Maybe my expectations were too high? But to be honest I don’t think expecting Shakespeare to be at least a main component in the story was expecting too much, I mean the book has his name in the title.. But anyways… I don’t mean for this review to come off as ranty and I’ve tried to give my honest opinions of the book and my reasoning for them. And I don’t by any means want to keep anyone from reading this book if you think you’d like it, just because it didn’t work for me doesn’t mean it won’t work for you.

Thanks to Netgalley and Delacorte for providing a digital e-ARC for review. 

1 Star