Kiss Me First

Kiss Me First (2013), a suspense novel by British author and journalist Lottie Moggach, chronicles the travails of Leila, a deeply introverted computer enthusiast who becomes embroiled in a mystery involving a website known as the Red Pill. The book is the basis for a 2018 television series of the same name airing in Great Britain on Channel 4 and in the United States on Netflix. The plot of the television series, however, diverges dramatically from that of the book. For Kiss Me First, Moggach received a Guardian First Book Award nomination.

At the beginning of the novel, Leila appears at a Spanish commune in search of a woman named Tess. The narrative then flashes back a few months to when Leila, a young and introverted barista at the London coffeehouse Caffe Nero, finds it enormously difficult to connect to people in the real world. With an absent father and a mother who recently passed from multiple sclerosis, Leila lives in near-total isolation. She spends most of her free time playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game under the handle "Shadowfax," a reference to Gandalf the White's horse in the Lord of the Rings book series. Leila's failure to understand social customs causes her to behave strangely at Caffe Nero, alienating both customers and her coworkers. For example, she eats leftover crumbs from discarded plates, not because she is hungry but because she is compulsive. She also frequently finds herself humming continuously in long stretched-out notes, only changing the tone when she finishes washing a dish. As a result of this off-putting behavior, Leila is fired. To make money in the meantime, Leila tests computer software in a freelance capacity remotely from her home.

One day, Leila stumbles upon a mysterious online community known as the Red Pill which promotes rational thought. It is named after the pill Morpheus hands Neo in the 1999 film The Matrix to open his mind to the truth of the world and free him from mental enslavement. Its founder Adrian Dervish, a strange individual, ingratiates himself with Leila, earning her confidence by granting her an "Elite Thinker" status within the Red Pill community. After many online conversations, Adrian invites Leila to meet him in person in what they refer to as an "F2F" meeting.



Though initially reluctant, Leila eventually agrees to the meeting, during which Adrian asks Leila to help him with an assisted suicide. Given that the right to die is a key tenet of the reason-based community, Leila agrees. Though Leila won't have to participate in the euthanasia itself, her job will be to maintain the victim's social media accounts and online persona so there is no evidence the person has died. As payment for her work, Leila asks for the precise amount she needs to cover her living expenses and nothing more.

The victim, she learns, is Tess, the 38-year-old woman Leila is searching for at the beginning of the novel. Having already attempted suicide, Tess is eager to leave the world while maintaining her online life through Leila. She plans to tell her family and friends she has moved abroad so they will neither grieve for her nor feel pain and guilt over her loss. As Leila pores through Tess's social media archive, she learns that the woman she will be impersonating lives a thrilling but troubling life full of sex, drugs, and parties. Leila goes about her research task with a clinical and humorless focus, asking Tess questions like, "Was the nickname 'Sugartits' widely used, or just by Steven Gateman?"

Over time, Leila begins to suspect that Adrian is not all that he seems. After talking with other suspicious individuals in the Red Pill community, she realizes that Adrian is the leader of a suicide cult. Exerting his power over others, Adrian convinces the introverted and often mentally ill individuals on the Red Pill site to commit suicide through a scheme of euthanasia and impersonation by people like Leila, which allows their social media and online personas to live on indefinitely. In some cases, victims with considerable fortunes give their money to Adrian before their deaths, making this scheme as much a profit-seeking endeavor for Adrian as it is a sick psychological power play.



Things become even more complicated when Tess's ex-boyfriend Connor contacts Leila via email, believing she is Tess. Leila finds herself falling in love with Connor, but she cannot determine whether her love is real or simply a consequence of having immersed herself in Tess's life. Eventually, the police uncover Adrian's scheme and Leila is wanted as its mastermind. She turns herself in, implicates Adrian as the real mastermind, and is released. She goes to Spain and finds that Tess has changed her mind about suicide and escaped Adrian's clutches.

According to The Guardian, Kiss Me First is "classy, frightening, and upsetting."