Review – Lips Touch Three Times by Laini Taylor (4.5/5 stars)
The book is formatted in an interesting way; and in itself the book is a beautiful book. At the beginning of each story a series of beautiful pictures tells the prelude to the story. The pictures are absolutely stunning and really fit the mood of the book. The book is written in a classic fairy tale type way, think dark fairy tales though, not Disney.
I was a bit surprised that this was classified as young adult. The last story especially deals with rape, torture, stealing souls from children, etc. I thought the stories were immensely creative and very engaging, but all of them are very dark and a bit disturbing. I personally don’t mind that in a story, but some people might find it uncomfortable. The stories are never dealt with in gory detail, but the imagery is there.
Below I touch on each of the three stories:
Goblin Fruit – About a girl who wants nothing more than to be someone else. She is tempted by a Goblin to eat their fruit and waste away to nothing. Beautiful story.
Spicy Little Curses – The ambassador to Hell and a demon curse an Indian baby so that the baby can kill with her voice. Things work out until the baby grows into a young woman and falls in love and is then tempted to use her voice. Another enchanting story.
Hatchling – This is the strangest and longest story of the bunch. About a girl Esme who is daughter to a woman named Mab. Mab was raised as a pet to an immortal race but escaped to free Esme. Unfortunately Esme is tied to this immortal race in ways Mab could have never guessed. This is a very creative story and the world is well-built; it is definitely an odd story too.
Overall it was an excellent and creative collection of stories. I would have given it 5 stars if the writing had been a bit more polished. At points the written can get a bit choppy, if the writing flowed a bit better these stories would be masterpieces. I will be checking out Taylor’s “Faeries of Dreamdark” series in the future.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– The Young Adult Reading Challenge
– The 100+ Book Reading Challenge
– Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge