Blog Tour {Excerpt & Review}: A Stiff Kiss by Avery Olive

Welcome to the A Stiff Kiss Blog Tour!

A Stiff Kiss

Avery Olive

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Who knew kissing a corpse would change everything?

Death always hits Xylia Morana too close to home, but she likes it that way. She hangs out with the terminally ill, attends random funerals, and every so often, when the weather is right, she sleeps in open graves.

But after Landon Phoenix, the high school hottie, dies in Xylia's arms, she sneaks into the morgue to say goodbye. How could she know stealing a kiss from his corpse would wake him up?

With Landon returned to the living and suddenly interested in Xylia, life has new meaning. But what Xylia doesn't realize is that by kissing Landon back to life, she's thrown Life and Death off balance. The underworld demands a body, and it might just have to be Xylia's this time.

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About the Author

Avery Olive is proudly Canadian. She is married, and when she’s not helping raise her very energetic and inquisitive son, she can be found working on her latest novel-where she devilishly adds U's into every word she can.

When she is looking for a break Avery enjoys cake decorating, losing herself in a good book, or heading out to the lake to go camping.

The release of Avery's first novel proves to her it won't be the last. As long as her family continues to be supportive, she can find the time, and people want to read, Avery will keep on writing.

Weird. The first thing I thought of when I read the synopsis was "This will be something weird". I guess it would be weird since who goes around kissing corpses?
The first few chapters I was treated to a typical opening of a YA read. A girl who was different, who dressed like everyday she was going to a funeral, who was at odds with her parent(s), and who did something that would warrant her a one-way ticket to Invisible-in-high-school-ville even if she happened to live in Snob Hill where everyone was loaded.
But I digress. I was totally mistaken and I am glad I picked up this book and took my time read it.
It was not at all a typical YA love story to say the least. It was something more that each of us, although in entirely different ways, went/is going/will go through in our teenage years, when everything is confusing and you just want to understand your place in the world.
Dealing with the loss of a loved one is not always easy. You want desperately to know, to understand.
Dealing with what you want in life, your future does not always end when you finish high school, enter college, finish college nor when you start your first job. It is ever ongoing and it might never stop.
And perhaps, weirdness aside (And the instalove thing that went on eventhough how the characters were so connected and they were united by something that even death cannot conquer. To me it was like someone was there to make sense of things but it's just... instalove doesn't cut it you know.), this was what A Stiff Kiss was trying to tell me. And it did kind of relayed what it was trying to say.
It is summed up in this quote:
“Just because you're giving up doesn't mean you're weak, it means you’re strong enough to walk away. -Anonymous.”
I also liked the fact that Xylia's relationship with her dad was not pushed aside, as what some (if not most)YA books tend to do.
The story was even-paced - little slow sometimes but it did successfully grounded the story between Xylia and Landon.