Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor

4 stars -- I liked it

A small collection of short stories (only three, to be exact), Lips Touch is "different." Each story is preceded by a couple of wordless graphic novel-type pages that are hard to decipher until you read the story, but still beautifully and hauntingly drawn.

The first story in the book, "Goblin Fruit," was my least favorite of the three, and it ends rather disappointingly. I would have preferred some follow-up, though the ending is quite clear what happens, just to see how everything played out. But as it is, the ending leaves the story with a bit of mystery, a bit of longing, and some heartbreak and sorrow.

The second story, "Spicy Little Curses," was by far my favorite story in the collection. The two female protagonists are strong characters, and I love how a seemingly hopeless situation is turned around. There's romance here as well, and a lot of follow-up so the ending feels solid.

And finally, "Hatchling" was an interesting read. I couldn't quite predict what was going to happen, which I love (I hate it when plots are easy to see through), and the back story(ies, really) was just as interesting as the main storyline.

I also appreciated how unlike each other each of three stories were despite have similar themes and, of course, the same author. A reader can't say that each story has a happy ending, nor do they all have sad endings. It's a coin toss, really, as to how the story will go. And each idea is unique and different, which is played up by the short "graphic novels" at the beginning of each chapter--it's not often that publishers are willing to pay for the extra print colors or put the effort into such an unusual idea (though it's becoming more frequent now as they're seeing it pay off, in some cases at least), so I applaud this publisher's "going out on a limb" to do this book.

Overall, I think this is a nice collection of stories to have about for a quick read.