Gimme' a Kiss

One of my favorites! I've read all of Christopher Pike's YA horror books (when I was a teen and, again, when I was in my 30's), and I'm rating my favorites now with a similar review just to let you know what books are his absolute best, in my opinion. This is in my top 2!

This book was wonderful, and full of surprises! I never would have imagined what really happened in the end. It keeps your attention the whole time and you really want to continue reading it till the end. The book is full of suspense and has a lot of twist to it. It would be well worth your time to read this book, you will find yourself trying to figure out what is going to happen even when your not reading. You can really jump right into this book easily.

Set in Santa Barbara, California, "Gimme a Kiss" switches point of views between Alice Palmer (during the police interrogation) and her friend, 17-year-old Jane Retton (during the events leading up to the present storyline), though Jane is more of the main character, or at least the one I was rooting for from the beginning. Distinctly, Jane hasn't been on good terms with the promiscuous head cheerleader (Patty Brane--middle name "No"?) at Wilcox High--and especially of late, when Patty gets a hold of Jane's diary and Xeroxes a juicy page from it, then distributes those copies around school. Jane's boyfriend (Kirk Donner) is of no help either, instigating the rumors and ruining her reputation.So, as a way to get even with Patty and Kirk, Jane uses Alice's weekend yacht party as the perfect place to enact her plans for revenge, which involves her faking her own death and placing the blame on Patty and Kirk. As a few reviewers mentioned before me, this has a clear "Fall into Darkness" ring to it: staging one's own murder. I also noticed some similarities to "Bury Me Deep," mainly because of the scuba diving, though this book doesn't go quite into as much depth about the sport as "Bury Me Deep" did (thank goodness). This book is also a bit quicker to read than either one (I read it one sitting), being only 152 pages, which comes up a little short in Pike's standards.One thing I didn't quite understand about this book was the title, until I got a dozen or so pages into it. "Gimme a kiss" is a quote from Jane's fictitious diary, as well as a humorous reference to a "scandalous" secret at the end about cold sores. And speaking of the end, I think Pike may have inhaled a little nitrous oxide himself when he wrote it. It's deliriously funny, or maybe I was just punch-drunk tired from staying up half the night finishing it.However, I did notice something that may or may not have been a blunder on Pike's part. In the closing scene, some type of gas is released, but there's no mention of what type it is; and since one of the characters had mentioned storing laughing gas in the tanks, I'd have to assume that's what was in them. Yet nitrous oxide is nonflammable. Oopsie.As usual, Pike's wonderful wit, clever plotting, and black humor is rife in this book, creating some rather humorous scenes, like the one I mentioned above about the cold sores. "Gimme a Kiss" will certainly entertain Pike fans, young and old.

This book is about a girl named Jane who leaves her diary unattended at her dresser. Filled with wild secrets that aren't even true, the diary page somehow gets around school. Jane is so embarresed and mad. Her boyfriend is confirming the lie when it never happened and a girl she hates is making tons of copies. She plans a revenge that will get back at all of them. Jane plans her murder. She makes it look like her boyfriend and the girl who copied her diary page pushed her off a boat and she drowned when she's really alive the whole time. But Jane makes the mistake of telling her two closest friends and this time a death occurs that is painfully real. The ending is sure a surprise and I think the book was an original. Though it does resemble Fall Into Darkness, I can still tell the major difference between the two.

I noticed that a review done by another mentioned that this story was similar to "Fall Into Darkness"; I totally agree. I do have to admit that I was in suspense at the end when Pike managed to take a turn away from the plot of "... Darkness". This is one of his better books, definitely one you'll not want to put down. One thing I love about Pike is the way in which he doesn't shy away from killing off the likeable characters. It's nice to actually wonder if the main character will live in the end.

In "Gimme A Kiss," Jane Retton makes a plan that, if it works, could publicly destroy her boyfriend and the head cheer-leader. And her plan works--almost too well. The ending holds many surprises!