BOOK REVIEW:
I Kissed Her First
by Betty Cayouette
Fiction
Published by St. Martin’s Griffin, New York
Rating- 4 Stars out of five
Riley is a 24-year-old MBA student whose real interest is gourmet cooking. The story opens when she auditions for a job as Luna Leya’s private chef and is immediately hired for cooking up a batch of tasty scallops. The job will be to serve as Luna’s personal chef during her musical tour in Europe.
Luna Leya is a new singer who’s managed to make a name for herself singing alongside her boyfriend, Hudson, tapping into his popularity to boost her career. Actually, they are each tapping into the energy of the other, and it’s evident to both that their relationship is merely for PR with little or no actual content out of the public eye.
But Luna has been following the cooking vlogs of Riley’s and finds the blond girl to be intelligent, good-looking, and, after tasting her scallops, a really very fine cook worthy of bringing along on her tour. They fly to Paris together, and immediately Riley, already a seasoned lesbian, senses an attraction which she hopes is mutual.
The story continues as Cayouette alternates perspectives from Riley to Luna over the next 39 chapters, using first-person points of view, lots of internalizations, and dialogue. Although Luna Leya is supposed to be the model of the girl next door, having built her fan base on that assumption, she finds herself falling into the grip of a genuine love affair with Riley, wading ever deeper into love and finally breaking her songwriting block that’s been plaguing her.
The keen attraction each woman feels toward the other inspires both of them; and in this parallel story, each in her own way comes to us as something of a performer whose artistic inspiration is fueled greatly by her growing connection to the other. Of course, a story about the power that love has on the artist is not a new idea, but Cayouette brings it poignantly to us as an experience.
And that is, after all, the main purpose of writing a novel.
As the two women find each other, as it were, there comes the obvious conflict which any reader can well foresee; one of them is prepared for this love while the other is not. One has no inhibitions with regard to public opinion, while the other is nearly paralyzed by it. Is love worth putting all that Luna has worked to build and all that she can be at risk for? After all, how many chances do any of us get to be voted best new anything? And will Riley be able to tell her dads in Provincetown the truth about her ambitions to become a restaurant chef?
I wanted to give Cayouette five stars. She’s a fine writer. She has woven together a compelling narrative with a host of complications, not to mention having created two characters of real depth. I love the story and would like to read more of her work. But Cayouette seems insensitive to the deep emotional conflicts that must and surely do arise as a young woman like Luna Leya, a popular artist, comes suddenly face to face with a fork in the road concerning the very nature of her sexual identity. There really are (and must be therefore discussed) the elements of culture, nature, chemistry, and those deeply seated desires that make up the fundamental purposes of being a sustainable human in an existential sense (and being a culturally sustainable woman while at the same time finding her soul bound up gloriously with another woman’s heart). I’m sorry, you can’t pluck out these vexes like so many feathers and pretend they don’t exist. I would like to see Cayouette set aside this project for a short while and consider adding a few more chapters, and then I want her to get down into the dirty business of writing a story so honest it hurts her to tell it.
–HR Novelton
Fiction
Published by St. Martin’s Griffin, New York
Rating- 4 Stars out of five
Riley is a 24-year-old MBA student whose real interest is gourmet cooking. The story opens when she auditions for a job as Luna Leya’s private chef and is immediately hired for cooking up a batch of tasty scallops. The job will be to serve as Luna’s personal chef during her musical tour in Europe.
Luna Leya is a new singer who’s managed to make a name for herself singing alongside her boyfriend, Hudson, tapping into his popularity to boost her career. Actually, they are each tapping into the energy of the other, and it’s evident to both that their relationship is merely for PR with little or no actual content out of the public eye.
But Luna has been following the cooking vlogs of Riley’s and finds the blond girl to be intelligent, good-looking, and, after tasting her scallops, a really very fine cook worthy of bringing along on her tour. They fly to Paris together, and immediately Riley, already a seasoned lesbian, senses an attraction which she hopes is mutual.
The story continues as Cayouette alternates perspectives from Riley to Luna over the next 39 chapters, using first-person points of view, lots of internalizations, and dialogue. Although Luna Leya is supposed to be the model of the girl next door, having built her fan base on that assumption, she finds herself falling into the grip of a genuine love affair with Riley, wading ever deeper into love and finally breaking her songwriting block that’s been plaguing her.
The keen attraction each woman feels toward the other inspires both of them; and in this parallel story, each in her own way comes to us as something of a performer whose artistic inspiration is fueled greatly by her growing connection to the other. Of course, a story about the power that love has on the artist is not a new idea, but Cayouette brings it poignantly to us as an experience.
And that is, after all, the main purpose of writing a novel.
As the two women find each other, as it were, there comes the obvious conflict which any reader can well foresee; one of them is prepared for this love while the other is not. One has no inhibitions with regard to public opinion, while the other is nearly paralyzed by it. Is love worth putting all that Luna has worked to build and all that she can be at risk for? After all, how many chances do any of us get to be voted best new anything? And will Riley be able to tell her dads in Provincetown the truth about her ambitions to become a restaurant chef?
I wanted to give Cayouette five stars. She’s a fine writer. She has woven together a compelling narrative with a host of complications, not to mention having created two characters of real depth. I love the story and would like to read more of her work. But Cayouette seems insensitive to the deep emotional conflicts that must and surely do arise as a young woman like Luna Leya, a popular artist, comes suddenly face to face with a fork in the road concerning the very nature of her sexual identity. There really are (and must be therefore discussed) the elements of culture, nature, chemistry, and those deeply seated desires that make up the fundamental purposes of being a sustainable human in an existential sense (and being a culturally sustainable woman while at the same time finding her soul bound up gloriously with another woman’s heart). I’m sorry, you can’t pluck out these vexes like so many feathers and pretend they don’t exist. I would like to see Cayouette set aside this project for a short while and consider adding a few more chapters, and then I want her to get down into the dirty business of writing a story so honest it hurts her to tell it.
–HR Novelton
Copyright © 2026 hrnovelton.com. All Right Reserved