9780062397577
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Kissing in America audiobook

  • By: Margo Rabb
  • Narrator: Laura Knight Keating
  • Length: 9 hours 13 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperCollins
  • Publish date: May 26, 2015
  • Language: English
  • (3573 ratings)
(3573 ratings)
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Kissing in America Audiobook Summary

A must-read for fans of Jenny Han! Acclaimed writer Margo Rabb’s Kissing in America is “a wonderful novel about friendship, love, travel, life, hope, poetry, intelligence, and the inner lives of girls,” raves internationally bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love).

In the two years since her father died, sixteen-year-old Eva has found comfort in reading romance novels–118 of them, to be exact–to dull the pain of her loss that’s still so present. Her romantic fantasies become a reality when she meets Will, who can relate to Eva’s grief. Unfortunately, after Eva falls head-over-heels for him, he picks up and moves to California with barely any warning. Not wanting to lose the only person who has been able to pull her out of sadness–and, perhaps, her first shot at real love–Eva and her best friend, Annie, concoct a plan to travel to the west coast. As they road trip across America, Eva and Annie confront the complex truth about love.

In this honest and emotional journey that National Book Award Finalist Sara Zarr calls “gorgeous, funny, and joyous,” readers will experience the highs of infatuation and the lows of heartache as Eva contends with love in all of its forms.

Since publication, this novel received 4 starred reviews and has been named:

  • A Chicago Public Library Best Teen Book of the Year
  • A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens
  • A Miami Herald Best Book of the Year
  • A Spirit of Texas selection
  • A TAYSHAS High School Reading List Selection
  • An Oprah Summer Reading List selection
  • A Junior Library Guild selection
  • An Amazon Best Book of the Month
  • A Publisher’s Lunch Buzz Book for Young Adults

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Kissing in America Audiobook Narrator

Laura Knight Keating is the narrator of Kissing in America audiobook that was written by Margo Rabb

Margo Rabb is the author of the novels Kissing in America and Cures for Heartbreak; both received four starred reviews and were named to multiple best-of-the-year lists. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and Seventeen and have been broadcast on NPR. She received the grand prize in the Zoetrope short story contest, first prize in the Atlantic fiction contest, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award. Margo grew up in Queens, NY, and currently lives near Philadelphia with her family. Visit her online at www.margorabb.com.

About the Author(s) of Kissing in America

Margo Rabb is the author of Kissing in America

Kissing in America Full Details

Narrator Laura Knight Keating
Length 9 hours 13 minutes
Author Margo Rabb
Publisher HarperCollins
Release date May 26, 2015
ISBN 9780062397577

Additional info

The publisher of the Kissing in America is HarperCollins. The imprint is HarperCollins. It is supplied by HarperCollins. The ISBN-13 is 9780062397577.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

April (Aprilius Maximus)

February 12, 2017

Firstly, I just want to thank Penguin for sending my workplace an ARC for us booksellers to read! I've seen a couple of negative reviews of this book on goodreads and all I can think is, Did we read the same book? I thought this book was absolutely hilarious, honest and exhilarating to read! I loved every moment of it. I knew I was going to love it because I was literally laughing out loud by page 2, and it takes A LOT for a book to make me do this. I think it's because the type of humour in this book is EXACTLY my type of humour. It had me giggling like an idiot! I want to stress that this isn't a romance. It's a coming of age story that focuses mainly on friendship, family and grief and how these affect Eva throughout the events in the novel. I absolutely loved the poetry theme and the depth to the family issues and the road trip was just brilliant! I also loved how we got to see REAL issues that impact REAL teens today. I found the main character to be really relatable even though I haven't been through a grieving process or anything, I just felt like I connected to her for some reason, and props to Margo Rabb for creating a character that I easily could attach myself to! I love the theme in this book that true love comes in all different forms, not just romantic love. I loved reading about Eva's growth as a person and I loved joining her on her journey to self-discovery.I loved everything about this book and I highly, highly recommend picking it up if you love a good contemporary that has a romance throughout, but isn't solely romance focused. LOVED IT.

Tiff

June 09, 2015

4-4.5 stars. Review originally posted at Mostly YA LitThe first thing you need to know about this book is that it is not really about kissing at all . I think there are maybe three kisses total in the book. And the cover, while adorable, does not belie what's inside. Basically, Kissing in America is nothing like what you would expect it to be . Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes it's bad. For me, KiA was SO MUCH BETTER than I expected. It's a beautifully written, poignant tale of women and where their hearts lie . In particular, it's about one girl, Eva Roth, who lost her father in a plane crash two years ago. Eva and her father were close, sharing a love of writing and poetry, but Eva hasn't written a thing since he died, choosing to read romance novels by the dozen and focus on school instead. Meanwhile, Eva and her Women's-Studies professor mother have a strained relationship, because her mother seems to have completely put her father out of her mind. Eva falls into a romance with Will, a cool guy at school - they have a special night together, and then he suddenly moves away to California. Desperate to see him again, Eva concocts a plan with her best friend, science genius Amy, to get on a reality show that films in L.A. and travel out there by bus.I read some reviews that commented that Eva felt a bit young with her crush and her ambition to find Will, and I have to respectfully disagree. Eva has been very carefully sheltered by her mother during the formative years of her life, and her introvertedness fits perfectly with the grief and recovery process that she’s been going through . The fact that she’s dealing with it essentially alone (as her mother is basically ignoring her own grief) makes it even more realistic to me that Eva would latch onto the idea of happily ever after and perfect moments typical of romance novels.This is a story about a girl who craves romance, but needs unconditional love. It's a story about taking action and finding more than what you were looking for. It's about navigating complicated relationships and recognizing that people are more than just the stories we create about them in our minds. It's about learning to move on while holding on tight. If I have criticisms, they are that the book slowed down a bit for me in the middle, and that some of the fake romance novel excerpts seemed really, well, FAKE to me . As a reader of romance, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered any mass market paperback romance that had any mention of “ripe love-mounds” or “man-dew”. I know some of the descriptions were written for humor’s sake, but I felt that they were doing a bit of a disservice to the romance genre - which was strange because it went counter to one of the book’s themes of the romance novels & literary writing being able to sit together at the same table. Still, despite those slight reservations, I read this in two sittings, and honestly, if I had had time, I would have read it in one. It was completely absorbing, a true contemporary with a fully realized cast of characters. I loved everyone in this book. I loved how real it felt, and how many mistakes were made, and how the characters just kept on trying and loving and trying again. Bonuses:  Pitch-Perfect Writing: Margo Rabb's writing is alternately quirky, with weird and wonderful laughs, and then completely emotional, full of wisdom and a deep understanding of grief and how people cope. I Want To Go To There: Road-trip YA books are my crack, but this one is different, because most of it happens on buses. There's a different perspective to the road trip through the bus trip. Kick-Arse Secondary Characters: I can’t even with these characters. From Janet, Eva’s aunt who teaches EXTREME sexual safety in schools, to Amy, Eva’s best friend who wants desperately to go to MIT, to Irma, Eva’s mom’s boyfriend’s mother, who is a Jew-turned-Buddhist-turned-Christian-rancher’s wife, this cast is so quirky and lovely and real. Poetry & Literature: Not only is Eva a writer, but her aunt Lulu is a professor who wrote her thesis on Elizabeth Bishop, so this book is chock full of poetry and lines from literature. In fact, each chapter of Kissing in America begins with a line from a poem that colours the theme of the chapter - which is not in itself an unusual thing, but the pieces that Rabb chooses from are so perfectly aligned that it’s not hard to imagine that she actually built the story around them. It adds so much to the book and makes the hearts of Lit majors (like me) burst a little. The Final Word: Margo Rabb has completely bowled me over with her writing and her perfectly meandering story. This is a true writer’s book: for people who love flawed, realistic characters, emotional journeys, and love itself. A subtle gem highly recommended for YA and adult contemporary fans.

Chelsea

June 30, 2016

I HAVE SOME FEELINGS. First of all: I feel like this book gets a really bad rap and I don't get it at all. It's a super cute super fun contemporary and I definitely think it deserves a higher rating than it has on here. HOWEVER. I do recognize that the ending isn't quite right. It doesn't quite.. Fit. Which is why I'm taking off a star. That and the fact that it's a little insta-lovey, which y'all know I hate. But honestly those things didn't even deter me that much bc this book was super fun and surprisingly well written. I'll definitely read more from Margo Rabb in the future bc this book was adorbs.

Kelly

August 22, 2015

Most of the time when I read a book that I love, I devour it. I can't stop reading it; I don't want to leave the world or its characters. I don't want it to end and I want there to be sequels. Many, many sequels. Thousand page sequels.Kissing In America is different. I savored it, reading it chapter by chapter and then taking a small break. I didn't want it to end and I knew that every page I turned made that ending so much closer. I'm sure there have been other books like this for me, but I can't name one right now.This book is absolutely perfect for me. Eva is a huge reader (although she reads romances, which I tend not to read) and she's also still dealing with her dad's death. It's not a recent loss, so she has a little perspective on the grief, but it's still very much a thing in her life. Besides that, it's also all about relationships, and I love those books.Yes, Eva's consumed with a crush on Will, but this is just as much about her relationships with her mom and best friend. I love books that are layered and multi-dimensional and this is the best example of that I've read in quite a while.Highly recommended---but now I need a sequel.

Tedi

January 09, 2015

I cried at the end. It was that good.Margo Rabb has created a beautiful story about women - women who are so unbelievably strong in various ways - about finding yourself, about loss and how we cling to those that help us find our way out of the deep and dark pit of grief. This story made me laugh, it surprised me, it kept me eager to see what would happen next.I cannot WAIT to take this to one of my students on Monday morning.My only complaint is the title - I feel like the title belittles the story and makes it seem like it's about something that it's not. I would have taken "Finding Love Across America", but not this. Moral of the story: Do not let the title fool you! There is a smidge of romance, but it's about so much more than that!

The Bibliophagist

January 12, 2016

I was so excited to read this book. The summary sounded perfect: road trip across America, best friends, and first loves. This book has everything you want, and it did not disappoint.When Eva’s "boyfriend" suddenly moves to LA a few months into their relationship, Eva and her best friend, Annie, travel by bus to go see him, although their official excuse to travel cross country is to compete in the Smartest Girl in America competition. Within the first few chapters you get the sense that Eva is a smart, funny character. I loved being inside her head, hearing her inner monologues and reading about her thoughts of love and heartache. Eva was well rounded. She was smart but had a ton of flaws.This adventurous read just isn’t just a fun summer road trip book, it offers a unique take on death/loss/the grieving. There were so many quotes I highlighted in this book.Even though I adored this book, there were some moments while reading I felt conflicted. It's one of those stories where I was almost yelling at my Nook. One of my complaints is that the description/setting of the places in the south the girls stopped at seemed stereotypical. For example, when they stopped in Texas it was all rodeos, cowboy hats, and bails of hay. Same with Tennessee, it just didn’t feel real (although this didn't take away the charm of the novel).I like the overall message this novel gives. It’s a book about self exploration and loving yourself. I think there should be more books like this on the YA market.This book wasn’t laugh out loud funny, but there moments where I definitely chuckled. With all its heart, humor, and wit, this book belongs on the top of your to read list. Follow my book review blog:http://ya-book-reviews-by-ryan.tumblr...

Brian

February 14, 2015

The title and cover are a touch misleading; this is about so much more than kissing in America, and will appeal to a much larger audience than a teenage romance typically would. I'm a bit surprised at how much I like this one. Full review to come, but keep an eye out for this one in May.

Zuzana

July 17, 2015

I am an emotional wreck right now... I am trying to find words to describe how much I have loved this story, but I cannot. All I can say is that it will surprise you in the most wonderful way possible. If you expecting and classic love-story, you'll be in for a disappointment. That being said, you should give it a go. It's still a story of love, friendship and it will make you cry, laugh, giggle... Every poem is a poem about love. Every story is a story about love, you just need to read it to figure out what kind of love. Beautiful tale.

Lauren

August 04, 2016

This was SO good! I love a good road trip story. This book felt so realistic - especially with everything that happened towards the end. I loved the friendship the most I think. Some elements were a little crazy, like how quickly she fell for this guy and what she was willing to do to see him, but the journey itself felt relatable.

Michelle

July 17, 2015

A coming of age story, a love story, a funny story, this had it all. I absolutely adored this book. It was a story of moving on, letting go, courage, love, relationships, learning, and travel. It was a beautiful and funny story that was never dull or boring. This is one not to be missed.

Gel

July 20, 2015

What a fantastic book. One of the best YA books out there. Full review will be up soon.

What Makes Patri

August 30, 2015

We are The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club, to know more about this book, go to the post in our website: Kissing in America by Margo Rabb If you are interested, you can visit our website: The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club's Review: Rate: 3,5 starsReview:Kissing in America is truly a heart-breaking story that will inspire you with every page and make you read a truly amazing teenage experience around America through Eva's point of view.Let's start this review saying that the previous title Margo's book had, Cures for Heartbreak, was more accurate than the actual one. Kissing in America is not your book if you're looking for a summer romance with butterflies and rainbows and a very happily ever after. Kissing in America is Evie's story about believing in love even after she has all the reasons to just give up, to trying to survive to the loss of her father and being the only romantic person left in her house.What I liked about the story was Annie. She's what I like to call a true teenager. She has problems, she falls in love, does impulsive things, talks and dreams about boys, has it's ups and downs with her mother... Like a said, a true teenager. Plus, she has a literary side that I truly loved. Her love for literature made me put post-its all over my ARC to remember where they were. The story starts a bit slow to my liking, but we had to understand Annie's surroundings, her situation and what Will meant to her. So I could pass it up. There are some way funny moments that made me laugh out loud, but the author had the ability to also combine heart-breaking and romantic moments. See an example:I wanted to text my mom: I would shoot myself, but instead I'll go poison myself because Janet would find that a nice sanitary way to die."Let's just say it doesn't look like the most comfortable thing on the planet. Their penises are four feet long.""I'm not planning on having sex with an elephant.""The story was a fantasy, but the feelings were real, I thought as we got back on the bus. That yearning, the sparks, the enormity of love - I felt those exact things with Will.""Grief isn't like a map you can follow. It's not a simple route with a destination. Sometimes you loop back and find yourself in the exact same place you left."Overall, Kissing in America was a good read and it was a different read from all the romance stories I had been reading. Kissing in America was more about healing and discovering that you can survive a break up. That you can learn from your experiences and mistakes and that everything can happen. It was truly an adventure.Dream Cast:Maia Mitchell as EvaGregg Sulkin as WillAriel Winter as AnnieWinona Ryder as Eva's MomTina Fey as Eva's Aunt

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