Reviewed by PizzyGirl
Retro Review by Annika
TITLE: Five Times My Best Friend Kissed Me
AUTHOR: Anna Martin
NARRATOR: Jesse Cota
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 6 hours, 17 minutes
RELEASE DATE: January 26, 2017
BLURB:
When you realize you want to marry your best friend at age six, life should follow a pretty predictable path, right? Maybe not.
As a kid, Evan King thought Scott Sparrow was the most amazing person he’d ever met. At 17, his crush runs a little deeper, and nothing seems simple anymore. Scott is more interested in football and girls than playing superheroes, and Evan’s attention is focused on getting into art school. A late-night drunken kiss is something to be forgotten, not obsessed over for the next 10 years.
When life suddenly brings them back together, it doesn’t take much for the flame Evan carried for Scott nearly all his life to come roaring back, and Evan discovers that life sometimes has a strange way of coming full circle.
RETRO REVIEW:
This was a sweet love story and an overall feel-good book about two friends finally finding themselves in the same place at the same time. Sometimes love isn’t enough – the timing has to be right as well. Scott and Evan have been best friends since that summer when they first met when they were six. That friendship grows into secret longings and crushes – and a few shared kisses. We see snippets though their lives, how it all began, the separations and what’s more – the love between them that shines through everything. Telling their story this way adds depth to their story that might otherwise have been absent. Jesse Cota did a really good performance of this book. He captured the moments and the feelings of the people and brought them to life for the listener and made you a part of their journey.
While I wished this book was a little more show rather than tell, it was still sweet to watch Evan and Scott fall in love and dance around each other to finally finding their happily ever afters.
RETRO RATING: 
REVIEW:
This story was not at all what I was expecting, though to be fair, I am not sure what I was expecting. This was a very slow and steady journey of best friends from initial meeting in childhood to that lovely misunderstood thing we call adulthood. The story was told in hopping timeline fashion, which I normally do not like, but which worked perfectly well for this story. I needed things to jump about to understand fully how things got to the present and how these men go to be who they are.
Seeing things from Evan’s eyes both in the present and the past was heart wrenching because I was so connected to Evan and so invested in his happiness. To see the push and pull and ups and downs, made this slow journey so tense and almost hard to bear because I wanted this to just rush forward and get to the happy! But I NEEDED this to be slow, because with each tiny step forward, I learned a bit more about Scott and I felt a little more connected to him as well as Evan.
There was very little angst beyond the ups and downs of the relationship journey. Overall, this story felt relaxed, steady, hopefully romantic. I was caught up from the very start and as things progresses, I slid into this comfortable ride that left me feeling satisfied and fulfilled. This is the quintessential comfort read that I will revisit when I want something I know will be easy to listen to and will leave me happy and light.
Jesse Cota is new to me but he did a fantastic job on this story. He brought all the characters to life and allowed the emotion to shine through. He read this in an easy way that felt natural and enhanced that overall slow tension of a friends to lovers story.
I highly recommend this story. It was well crafted, well written, and full of happiness and heart.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: