Review: Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley
Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, Consider Yourself Kissed intermingles the personal and the public with originality and wit, tracing the complex path of a relationship across a decade characterised by momentous upheaval.
When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and – he insists – half an inch taller than the average British male. His charming four-year-old daughter, Zora, only adds to his appeal.
And yet ten years on, something important is missing from the life Coralie and Adam (though let’s face it, mostly Coralie) have built. Or maybe, having gained everything she dreamed of, Coralie has lost something she once had: herself.
Set against an eventful decade that included the soap opera of five Prime Ministers plus Brexit and Covid, Consider Yourself Kissed puts the subjects of love and family on a grand stage, bringing to life how the intimate drama in our homes inescapably competes for energy and attention with the shared drama of our times.
Consider Yourself Kissed is a captivating portrait of a woman in love which effortlessly balances sweetness with bite, the public with the personal, and humour with heart.
REVIEWED BY ZEYNEP KAZMAZ
Consider Yourself Kissed is a tale told over ten years of Coralie’s life, beginning when she meets Adam and quickly finds herself at the centre of a growing family. Although it is described as a literary love story, it can also be classified as a ‘realistic romcom’. Impressively, it maintains a lightheartedness at its core, despite also being painfully realistic and uncomfortably relatable.
While there are many accounts of finding love, it is much rarer to come across such delicately woven stories about the complexity of maintaining love. Consider Yourself Kissed manages to do exactly that. It ties the reader to itself at the very beginning of Coralie and Adam’s relationship, just as a more traditional love story might, but soon it blooms into something more, something both less familiar and instantly recognisable.
The genius of this story is in how it combines beautiful and hopeful storytelling with the everyday struggles of real life that often get overlooked in love stories. It is also smartly set during a very specific decade in London, placing it firmly in the sections of our brains reserved for events we remember personally rather than those we have observed from afar.
Consider Yourself Kissed is a book for everyone who finds, or wants to get better at finding, the beauty in everyday life.