Thursday, October 11, 2012

Kissing Shakespeare

Author: Pamela Mingle

Source: Portland Book Review

Summary: (goodreads)

Miranda has Shakespeare in her blood: she hopes one day to become a Shakespearean actor like her famous parents. At least, she does until her disastrous performance in her school's staging of The Taming of the Shrew. Humiliated, Miranda skips the opening-night party. All she wants to do is hide. 

Fellow cast member, Stephen Langford, has other plans for Miranda. When he steps out of the backstage shadows and asks if she'd like to meet Shakespeare, Miranda thinks he's a total nutcase. But before she can object, Stephen whisks her back to 16th century England—the world Stephen's really from. He wants Miranda to use her acting talents and modern-day charms on the young Will Shakespeare. Without her help, Stephen claims, the world will lost its greatest playwright. 


Miranda isn't convinced she's the girl for the job. Why would Shakespeare care about her? And just who is this infuriating time traveler, Stephen Langford? Reluctantly, she agrees to help, knowing that it's her only chance of getting back to the present and her "real" life. What Miranda doesn't bargain for is finding true love . . . with no acting required.


Review: This review was originally posted on Goodreads, and I also wrote a separate and distinct review for PortlandBookReview.

 "It started out kind of slow. Miranda was a whiny character in the beginning and it was difficult to get a better feel for her personality before she was transported back in time. In Elizabethan England, she was acting as Stephen's sister, Olivia. So in the beginning it was difficult to grasp her character. And Stephen was a jerk at first too.

The mystery is not much of a mystery, but it isn't the main point either, so that didn't give much cause for disappointment. What was a little disappointing was the not so pretty ending. It will leave some unexplained questions. Like how exactly does Stephen's power work? Or why wasn't it elaborated on? The book really is more about Miranda's personal growth than anything.


William Shakespeare is definitely a secondary character off to the side. The entire book is about trying to get him to continue as a playwright, but even Miranda doesn't really get to know him all that deeply. Readers get a very superficial image of him. But I did love the Author's Note on how and why the story takes place where it does. It is a suggestion of who Shakespeare was before he went to London.


Overall, it had great action, the romance was realistic, and it was a good story."


Rating: 1 2 3 3.5 4 5

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My excuse for not having posted anything all that good in over a month: At first, it was filling out all my paperwork for school and being on vacation and blah, blah, blah. Now? Still school. Fifteen credits isn't easy, even if 2 of those are PE classes! Haha. They still take up soooo much time. I barely have time to study, but I do not want to give up my blog. I am fairly certain that reading is the only thing keeping me sane in between Calculus 1 and memorizing how to name compounds. What I am saying is that it will continue to be slow around here. I have a couple essays to write for my transfer and it is Midterms. Already. But I will still be posting! Sporadically, but I will. Thanks for being great readers until now and I hope you enjoyed your visit to my blog today!

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