Alright, so...where to begin?
The first book surprised me with how good it was. A lot, actually. I had such a fun time with it that I went out of my way to go hunt down the other two in the series shortly after finishing up. Now that I've finally read book two, however, one thing has become very clear: I hyped myself up way too much.
The charm and originality and instances of doing something fun and different with typical tropes, all of which were present in book one, get replaced in Kiss by severely watered-down versions of what they were before. The melodrama, meanwhile, gets cranked up to eleven thanks to not much of an actual plot to keep the pages turning, and as such the characters that, in Falls, were all written very well and very consistently in order to compliment one another, become typical two-dimensional boards meant to represent various archetypes, none of which are terribly intriguing.
Honestly, the character mauling that this book commits was my biggest problem with it. Autumn's personality flip-flops back and forth and the reasons behind this are never explained, chalked up instead to plot convenience. Towards the end, JJ loses every single thing that made him a good personality by trading it in to become Autumn's lapdog. Sean is a jerk, then he's not. Reenzie is a jerk, then she's still a jerk, and yet never gets any comeuppance this time. Kyler "Mr. Mega Pop Star" Leeds is a GIANT jerk throughout this ENTIRE novel, but it still portrayed as someone every character loves or ironically hates. Key word being ironically, because we're clearly meant to know everybody is head over heels for this guy. It couldn't have been any more blatantly obvious if he had a gigantic "I AM SEAN V2" sign over his head flashing bright red the entire time. Rarely does what any character does at any point makes sense, and while the plot has lots of enjoyable moments, they're diluted by the absurdity of the overall story and how messy the execution is- there are too many side stories all crammed in here, and almost none of them see any concrete resolution because of it. Characters introduced and plot devices brought into play are entirely forgotten or glossed over to save time. It's just really, embarrassingly clunky...especially so when you consider how well the first book handled itself story-wise.
Basically, in most areas that Falls succeeded, Kiss fails. Not terribly hard, but fails none the less. The charm of the first book is out the window by the last scene and out the door by the final word, and gone with it is my hype for book 3- if, of course, said last words are any indication of what's coming. I'm hopeful still that it's all just a case of Sequel Syndrome...but I can't really be sure.
Overall, I still give it a three. It was enjoyable from a pure reading perspective, and I still had fun with it and lost myself in the world all over again- one thing that Thorne is really, really good at is making good use of her words and really bringing out Autumn's voice- it becomes incredibly easy to fall into the belief that she's just telling this big, crazy story to you over a cup of coffee or something. Besides that, the writing itself is smooth, crisp, and polished...but not too polished. It flows, it reads easy, and it's very entertaining.
That all being said, though, as a writer I just can't justify anything beyond a three-star rating here. The plot is just too huge of a mess to overlook, and the characters themselves are written so poorly that they're only saved by how great the narration and description of their situation is. Book three, I have hopes for you to save this series. We'll see, I suppose.