When I saw the title of the book Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous by cowriters Annie Mare and Ruthie Knox who go by the pen name Mae Marvel, I was instantly hooked. Celebrity romance stories are something I’ve always been interested in — both in the fictional and real world. This has only become more true as sapphic romances have been expanding their subject matter. There’s something really fun about mixing the chaos of celebrity with the messiness of falling in love. And this book is such a solid mix of those two things.

Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous technically fits the trope of “regular person falls for famous person” books, but that doesn’t capture the whole story. “Regular” character Wil is not as famous as her old friend Katie Price. But also, Katie isn’t a stranger. Wil is falling in love with the real Katie — not Katie Price the movie star, the Katie Price she drove around in her dad’s Bronco senior year of high school. It can be argued Wil fell in love with Katie in high school when she was also just a regular person.

The book is packaged as a story “for everyone who almost kissed their best friend and then did.” While Katie’s career as an award-winning actress and director certainly informs the story’s plot, it feels like she works incredibly hard to not be “A-list Katie” when Wil’s around. The women come back into each other’s lives at a time where they both want to be more than who people know them as.

Wil Greene is a bit of a TikTok sensation. The premise of her account is simple: Twice a week, every week, she kisses a new person. It seems innocent enough, but people are definitely starting to notice, and not just her mom’s co-workers. What started out as a dare has now become a major part of Wil’s persona. It also provides a good distraction from the parts of her life that aren’t going the way she wants them to, like her failed law career and her father’s death.

Katie Price is at a crossroads. In the last 13 years, she has taken the world by storm — first as an actress, and then as a director. She has worked incredibly hard to get to where she is, and she doesn’t take any of it for granted. But she knows that because of her level of fame, people are going to pay closer attention to everything she does professionally. And it’s that pressure that fuels and terrifies her. Katie is about to start her own production company and write her first screenplay, but she can’t escape the much older Hollywood actor who helped her get her career started when she was 18. The fear of failing epically sends her back home to Wisconsin.

The reunion between Wil and Katie is absolutely delicious. It simmers with the frisson of tension that comes from two adult women who meant everything to each other and then didn’t talk for 13 years. These two women have known each other their whole lives. While they went different ways, at their core, they haven’t changed. From the first time Wil speaks to Katie, it’s like no time has passed. The pair are quickly transported right back to the roles they filled senior year of high school, and we readers are transported back with them. Mae Marvel know how to create tension and use it to underscore the characters’ chemistry. I immediately wanted Wil and Katie to kiss — being patient isn’t something I was particularly interested in when it came to these two.

The sexy stuff is well worth the wait though. These are two women who know each other intimately from an emotional standpoint coming together to know each other intimately in a physical way. Even though they’re best friends, sex is the one way they don’t know each other. The Mae Marvel team does a beautiful job of showing us the wonder and excitement of Wil and Katie taking their relationship to the next level. They spend so much time getting to know the women they are as adults, and when they finally do have sex with each other, it feels just as exhilarating for the reader as it does for the characters.

Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous takes on a close third person point of view and is told from both Wil and Katie’s point of view. It’s important, because it gives you the necessary space you need to understand the characters and the people and things close to them, but it also gives you a good amount of distance. Some people have trouble attaching to third person povs, but for this book, I found myself really enjoying the distance. It’s necessary sometimes to see your characters through multiple people’s eyes rather than just one.

I’m finding myself opening more to second-chance romance as a trope, and books like Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous are definitely pushing me to seek more stories out. I’m drawn to the ambiguous feelings when the characters are teens that blur the line between friends and something more. Can you consider something a second-chance romance if it didn’t really take off in the first place? Or do we call it second-chance romance because the two women have been thrust into each other’s lives at a very specific time that will give them the space they need to finally be ready for the romance they wouldn’t have been able to handle as kids?

Summer has unofficially begun, and I can’t think of a better book to take outside and enjoy, even though it takes place in the winter. It works sitting by the pool, laying on the beach, or just on a blanket at the park.

Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous by Mae Marvel is out now.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!