- This title was longlisted for the 2013 Guardian First Book Award. Leila has never met Tess, but she now knows more about Tess than anyone in the world. She"s read all of her emails, researched her past and asked Tess for every detail about her friends and family. Tess has never met Leila. But if she wants to slip away from the world unnoticed, she needs to trust Leila with her life. At first, Leila finds it easy to assume Tess" identity, and no one has any reason to distrust her. But as Leila is soon to discover, there is much more to a person than the facts and there are things about life you can learn only by living it... Original, haunting and utterly gripping, Kiss Me First is an electrifying debut from a phenomenally gifted storyteller.