Book Review: Kissing Shakespeare by Pamela Mingle

Kissing Shakespeare

By Pamela Mingle

Release Date: August 14, 2012

Source: Author

Summary: 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 lose 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 book was so good!! I was so close to giving it five stars, but there were just a couple of things that knocked it down a bit. But first with the fantastically amazing good parts of this book! 

I love historical romances, and Kissing Shakespeare was practically a historical romance for young adults (I say practically because it still is about a girl form the present time). The time period a majority of the book was spent in is so interesting and I absolutely loved it! Miranda is brought back into Shakespeare's time by a mysterious fellow student and is told to seduce Shakespeare or else he may never write the masterpieces he is so famously known for today. Miranda replaces her jeans for elegant gowns and loses her iPod for cross-stitch (one thing she really isn't a big fan of about that time). 

Miranda adjusts to playing the role of a girl named Olivia, who is the sister of Stephen, the guy who brought her back to that time. And seducing the very man she has basically centered her theater life around? Miranda cannot believe this has happened to her. Instead of facing the old, unattractive Shakespeare we're all used to seeing in pictures, Miranda meets a young, very attractive teenage version of the master himself. Maybe seducing her hero won't be so terrible after all! 

The whole storyline was great, with Shakespeare contemplating joining the Jesuits in the predominantly Protestant country and Miranda having to persuade him to keep his life as a schoolmaster and continue his writing. But when Miranda realizes how attractive and caring Stephen is, the storyline gets juicer by the page! The only problem, though, is that some things progressed too fast while others seemed to drag by. The relationship between Stephen and Miranda and Shakespeare and Miranda kind of progressed too fast without the necessary getting-to-know-you phase most relationships have. Then, once I got to about the last 60 pages, things seemed to take forever to happen and all they did was talk to each other. I wish the end was more exciting and the beginning of the book took more time to develop relationships. 

Other than those few things, Kissing Shakespeare was definitely a great read for Young Adult and Shakespeare fans. And I love the cover! If you want a nice, romantic story to spend reading on a warm, lazy summer day, then Kissing Shakespeare is the book for you!