Kylie Adams First Kiss

First Kiss

Kylie Adams

Signet, Jul 2005, $6.99, 304 pp.

ISBN: 0451215818

A decade has passed since Kiki Douglas won Miss Texas and was first runner-up in the Miss America contest. She has since been on several soap operas with her character always ending up dead. Currently out of work, she plans to go home to Fredericksburg to attend her brother's wedding to a Jersey girl in which she hopes to bring some class to the reception although one of the other bridesmaids was her ex-husband's lawyer in the divorce.

The New York Post catches her in a provocative pose with rising music superstar Tom Brock, making it seem sleazy as he is married. They make quite a scandal in which the town's gross DJs label Kylie the most hated woman in Manhattan. Calling her a housebreaker and other vile names, the worst comment is they inform the world she is a soap opera has-been at thirty four. Heeding her best friend's advice Kylie hides in a hotel where she meets the playboy owner Maurizio Tomb. As they fall in love, both misjudges the depths of compassion of the other as the media paints both as shallow hedonists.

This amusing chick lit tale stars a female who seems schizoid at times, a tabloid delightful bimbo turning into a Socrates clone advising her pals and her beloved. Though linked to the overall wedding of the Bridesmaid Chronicles the storyline never really ties back to book one FIRST DATE by Karen Kendall. Still the lead couple is a fine pairing of two individuals much deeper than the media's air brushed fifteen second sound bite.

Harriet Klausner