A collection of three short stories all based around a life changing kiss, including stunning artwork by Jim di Bartolo. Reading her short stories it just goes to show how good a writer LT is, as each story felt like they are full books. You connect with the characters and are really invested in the plots even though they're less than 100 pages each. Nothing feels rushed or unexplained. Thr artwork does steal the show slightly as it is stunning! Its shown before each short story and depicts events that would have occurred beforehand. You don't really know what they are showing until you read the story but then it all makes sense.

This wonderful and intimate collection of novellas from Laini Taylor made the world feel far off whilst I was reading them. Laini has taken traditional folklore, fairytales and Romantic poems to shape three stories of first kisses. Through every sentence you can feel Laini's imagination and see what she wanted to shape with her words and it truly does show the magic, emotion and the often experienced surprise that is felt at that moment in your life. The book is bound together with Jim Di Bartolo gorgeous illustrations, that match his wifes words perfectly. It is a beautiful book, worth every penny.

These two short stories and novella are utterly captivating, weaving aspects of old fairytales and folk lore with exotic new ideas. Every character will leave a mark and have you wishing these snippets of tales would last forever. Beautiful.

Laini Taylor’s collection of short fiction centres thematically around the moment when – you guessed it – lips touch. The world moves, something changes. It may be a small disturbance, ripples spreading out towards a new and foreign shore. Or perhaps the change is electric, the spark that starts an inferno. In Goblin Fruit, a story inspired by Christina Rossetti’s fantastical poem, ’Goblin Market’, the moment heralds a fall into damnation. Whereas in Spicy Little Curses Such As These, the touching of lips is the shift, like the volta line of the sonnet, which signifies a change of direction. Hatchling is different again. The act of lips coming together haunts the story like memory, a nostalgic symbol of what has passed and what could possibly be again. In fact, what I liked about Hatchling – apart from the sumptuous world-building – was the resonant presence of Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. I found obvious parallels between the tribal Druj and the Chimaera of Eretz, not to mention the double lives idea employed so effectively in Daughter. My favourite story, however, is Spicy Little Curses. I adore fairy tales and the fairy tale literary form, which Taylor uses to brilliant effect. The story has a multi-mythical feel, with strands pulled from mythologies as disparate as Greek and Indian. The structure is tight, the pace fluid, and the narrative embodies a perfect balance between immediacy and distance. If I had any criticism to make at all, it would be that Goblin Fruit ends too abruptly, perhaps because Taylor spends so much time painting Kizzy for us. It actually reads like the beginning of a novel, rather than a short story. You’re lulled into a feeling of length, which the sudden end quite jarringly destroys. I was a little disappointed, but only because I’d come to like Kizzy as a character and didn’t want to say goodbye just yet. Overall, Lips Touch is a beautifully crafted collection. Taylor’s writing is intelligent and imaginative, delving beyond the physical act of kissing into a subtle world that is as rich and strange as the human heart. The Hodder hardback, sumptuously illustrated by Jim di Bartolo, would make the perfect gift for anyone with a love of fantasy or fairy tales.

Each story starts with a few pages of a tale in graphic picture form where you can see how history has repeated itself. What I love about Laini Taylor is she lets her imagination run wild and writes what she sees almost as if her dreams have been made real. I don't know if her Daughter of Smoke and Bone was a result after writing these novellas but her skill in auration is such that I can see everything she writes. A charming collection that I urge you to try as this is an author who blows my mind.