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Book Review: Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
Title: Blood and Chocolate
Author: Annette Curtis Klause
Published: New York: Delacorte Press, 1997
Page Count: 264
Total Page Count: 36,357
Text Number: 104
Read For: my own enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: Vivian is a werewolf: young, attractive, just come of age, and proud to be a wolf. However, after the death of her father, her pack has been displaced and is in turmoil, making her feel estranged from the other wolves. When she meets a human boy named Aiden, romance sparks between them. He is a welcome change from the turmoil of her wolf life, but love between a human and a werewolf is forbidden and Vivian worries that Aiden will not be able to accept her completely. Blood and Chocolate is a very different coming of age story, in which Vivian must learn to completely accept herself as a wolf and learn the differences between the werewolf and the human. The plot is interesting, but the characters are exaggerated and idealized and the writing lacks skill, although improves during the course of the book. This is a text I would have preferred to keep on remembering fondly from my childhood; it does not make a very good reread for an adult audience. Ambivalently recommended.
There are some books from your childhood that you come back to, reread, and discover that they are as good as you remember or even better. There are other books from your childhood that turn out to be something of a disappointment, and this book is of that later category. Blood and Chocolate has a wonderful premise, but complications such as characterization and writing style drag the book down. The first half is bad, almost laughably so. The second half improves as characters become more complex and the writing matures, but all in all this is a book best left fondly remembered rather than reread.
For the first part of the text, the characters are cliché to a great degree; only with complications in the plot do they become more complex themselves. Vivian is devastatingly attractive with exceptionally long legs. She wears skin-tight dresses that "sheath" her form. She writes her phone number on Aiden’s palm. Until the character falls into love and then begins to doubt her love, she is exceptionally limited, idealized, cliché, and laughably so for all qualities. The writing style also begins as limited and as cliché, rich with verbs like “sheath,” cliff-hangers, thoughts in italics, and a brash neo-Gothic air. However, I suspect that the book was written linearly, because by the end the writing style has much matured and improved.
The improvement in both character and writing style makes the end of the book better, even satisfying, but it also makes the book as a whole feel disjointed. In fact, the end of the book is quite good, both in terms of the plot itself and Vivian’s changes and challenges, and in terms of style and technique. On this account, I do somewhat recommend the book, as by the end it feels like a worthwhile read. However, the better the end of the book gets, the worse the beginning feels in comparison, making me wish that Klause and her editor had spent more time bring the whole of the book to a universal high standard. In the end, I recommend this text only ambivalently: it’s not a bad one to read as young adult and the ending does help justify the time spend reading, but technically it is an inconsistent, sub par text. Read it if you want, or don’t, but you may not want to come back to it if you had fond memories of it from your childhood.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
Author: Annette Curtis Klause
Published: New York: Delacorte Press, 1997
Page Count: 264
Total Page Count: 36,357
Text Number: 104
Read For: my own enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: Vivian is a werewolf: young, attractive, just come of age, and proud to be a wolf. However, after the death of her father, her pack has been displaced and is in turmoil, making her feel estranged from the other wolves. When she meets a human boy named Aiden, romance sparks between them. He is a welcome change from the turmoil of her wolf life, but love between a human and a werewolf is forbidden and Vivian worries that Aiden will not be able to accept her completely. Blood and Chocolate is a very different coming of age story, in which Vivian must learn to completely accept herself as a wolf and learn the differences between the werewolf and the human. The plot is interesting, but the characters are exaggerated and idealized and the writing lacks skill, although improves during the course of the book. This is a text I would have preferred to keep on remembering fondly from my childhood; it does not make a very good reread for an adult audience. Ambivalently recommended.
There are some books from your childhood that you come back to, reread, and discover that they are as good as you remember or even better. There are other books from your childhood that turn out to be something of a disappointment, and this book is of that later category. Blood and Chocolate has a wonderful premise, but complications such as characterization and writing style drag the book down. The first half is bad, almost laughably so. The second half improves as characters become more complex and the writing matures, but all in all this is a book best left fondly remembered rather than reread.
For the first part of the text, the characters are cliché to a great degree; only with complications in the plot do they become more complex themselves. Vivian is devastatingly attractive with exceptionally long legs. She wears skin-tight dresses that "sheath" her form. She writes her phone number on Aiden’s palm. Until the character falls into love and then begins to doubt her love, she is exceptionally limited, idealized, cliché, and laughably so for all qualities. The writing style also begins as limited and as cliché, rich with verbs like “sheath,” cliff-hangers, thoughts in italics, and a brash neo-Gothic air. However, I suspect that the book was written linearly, because by the end the writing style has much matured and improved.
The improvement in both character and writing style makes the end of the book better, even satisfying, but it also makes the book as a whole feel disjointed. In fact, the end of the book is quite good, both in terms of the plot itself and Vivian’s changes and challenges, and in terms of style and technique. On this account, I do somewhat recommend the book, as by the end it feels like a worthwhile read. However, the better the end of the book gets, the worse the beginning feels in comparison, making me wish that Klause and her editor had spent more time bring the whole of the book to a universal high standard. In the end, I recommend this text only ambivalently: it’s not a bad one to read as young adult and the ending does help justify the time spend reading, but technically it is an inconsistent, sub par text. Read it if you want, or don’t, but you may not want to come back to it if you had fond memories of it from your childhood.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.