From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Blakely comes a steamy romance that follows Kennedy as she falls for Noah . . . even though she shouldn’t.When I first met him I resisted. Like any forbidden love, I told myself he was a crush, and it would pass.That was a lie. It never faded.And I never expected he would fall for me just as hard. There were so many reasons that should have kept us … that should have kept us apart, least of all, the decade that separated us.Growing up in New York City, I learned early on that love is a double-edged sword. Love broke up my parents, love took away my friends, and love — the big, intense, never-been-like-this-beforelove — landed me in therapy.Now I’m heading to college, and it’s time to give love a clean slate again. But, can I really start over when he’s still in my life?Because the one man I’ve always wanted, and also the only guy I absolutely can’t have…And he wants me just as fiercely. Can I settle for anything less than the love of my life?Reviews: “21 Stolen Kisses captured my heart from the first page and didn’t let go. It made my heart ache, leap from joy, and ultimately root for a love that’s forbidden yet unstoppable.” – NYT Bestselling Author Claire Contreras”21 Stolen Kisses was a truly beautiful and genuine love story. This is romantic as it gets, people. Lauren Blakely brought it, and she brought it hard. Nothing will make you believe in true love more than this story right here.” – Shayna Renee’s Spicy Reads
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I have read every single one of Lauren’s novels and they are all amazing for different reasons and I loved 21 Stolen Kisses because it’s a beautiful story of Forbidden Love between two people that want to just be together. Simply and forever.
Kennedy and Noah have been tied together for the last few years through her mother, Jewel. Noah is jewel’s agent, business partner and best friend. They got their big breaks together because of her writing and his business sense. Their relationship isn’t complicated unlike the one that Kennedy and Jewel have. From the outside they look like the perfect Mother/Daughter duo and Jewel even believes it but Kennedy knows her mother like nobody else and hates what she has done over the years by having her lie about her love affairs from her father and the wives of the married men she has left in her path. She will always love her mom but not what she has done. She has come up with a plan for amends for the lies she has told but can their relationship be fixed before it’s too late?
Over the years Noah has enjoyed talking to Kennedy about their common interests such as Broadway musicals and art but recently it has turned into more. Kennedy is only 17 but very mature and wise beyond her years and he can be himself around her and she feels safe around him. She can talk to him about anything and everything. And she wants Noah for Noah and not for what he can do to further her career unlike most of the people in his life. But there are also risks to being in a relationship even when they want nothing but to love each other. They were lucky to keep their secret to themselves the first time around but can they hide their love during their second chance? Will their second chance be their last chance?
Throughout the novel there are flashbacks of their relationship and you will fall in love with them as a couple through them and will want them to be together. They just want the simple life but life is rarely simple and with a mother like Kennedy’s you will see why.
Overall…I loved this beautiful story of forbidden love. It was not full of sex but it is full of love, passion, suspense, guilt, forgiveness, sweetness and the most breathtaking kisses. It is very different from Lauren’s Seductive Nights Series and is one of the reason why I love her…she can write anything and still have me fully invested in the couple like they are my friends and I am a supporting character. I laughed, swooned and cried with Kennedy and Noah.
P.S. Seventeen is legal in New York…just sayin’
Quotes:
She was some kind of magic to me. She was everything I never knew I wanted, and she’d quickly become the one and only person I felt like myself with.
As I looked at her face, I didn’t see a seventeen-year-old. I saw a woman who wanted a man. Age was irrelevant. We were the same. We were instinct, we were desire, we were waiting.
“And even then who knows if it’ll have a happy ending. Not all love stories do, but that doesn’t make them any less powerful.”
There’s a reason why Lauren Blakely is one of my go-to authors and, after reading her newest release, 21 Stolen Kisses, I’m reminded exactly why this is the case. With each book, Lauren Blakely constantly reinvents herself within the romance genre and 21 Stolen Kisses is yet another refreshingly unique narrative, putting a new spin on a taboo subject. If you’re familiar with this author’s books, 21 Stolen Kisses is incomparable to anything she’s written thus far, although if I had to describe it, the book is a hybrid of Stars in their Eyes and the No Regrets series, tackling mature issues yet maintaining a certain innocence not typically found in adult romances. Having read all of Lauren Blakely’s books, I can confidently say that 21 Stolen Kisses is one of her most evocative book to date that took me on an emotionally-charged journey via the forbidden romance between protagonists, Kennedy and Noah.
The narrative is told through alternating perspectives yet Kennedy is the true focus of the story. Kennedy is an interesting study in contradictions, impossibly jaded about love after having witnessed the demise of her parents’ marriage but also wildly hopeful when it comes to the possibility of her own happily ever after. She’s incredibly young yet she emits this world-weariness more befitting of someone twice her age. It’s therefore fitting that she’s drawn to a man who’s not only older but who can relate to her on a deeper level. Their romance is built on a shared love of Broadway musicals, a quietly powerful kind of chemistry, and an epic collection of kisses that filled the pages with their poetic beauty. From page one and right up to the final chapter, Kennedy and Noah were responsible for all those gut-wrenching, pulse-pounding moments of anticipation and uncertainty that had my emotions yo-yoing alongside those of these characters.
21 Stolen Kisses is such a fascinating book because it’s nothing like I thought it would be yet it’s everything I have come to expect from a Lauren Blakely novel. You hear the combination of younger girl and older man and might picture something sordid and illicit, and perhaps that’s what the story could have been in someone else’s hands, yet this book is quite the opposite. This book is an ode to love – a love letter about falling in love and being in love. Kennedy and Noah’s story is achingly sweet, beautifully tragic, and unfailingly romantic, and, even though at times I worried over their intertwined fates, I had faith that everything would happen exactly as it should.
*complimentary copy provided by author in exchange for an honest review