Tuesday, February 06, 2007

#13 Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause

My Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Sixteen-year-old Vivian Gandillon is trying to fit in to her new home in the suburbs. But trying to act "normal" isn't always easy, since Vivian and her family are werewolves. It's glorious to have the power to change, and Vivian is a beautiful loup-garou with all the young wolves howling for her. But she wants no part of her squabbling pack, left leaderless by her father's recent death.

Then Vivian falls in love with a human, a meat-boy. If she reveals herself, will he relish the magic of her dual nature? When a brutal murder threatens the pack's survival, Vivian's divided loyalties are further strained. What is she really—human or beast?

I really enjoyed this book and will agree with some of the other reviews I saw on Amazon that it doesn't really seem a teen book, which if anything only added to it's enjoyment for me. The characters were well drawn and the story line moved along swiftly.

Klause's take on werewolves, as a hidden sect living among humans, was fairly consistent with the way they're portrayed by most authors such as Kelley Armstrong. But one major difference with Klause's wolves is that, although they live among humans, they tend to prefer the company of their own kind in social circles. Though other werewolves from other authors might also display this pack-like behavior, it seemed more prominent in Klause's wolves because they looked down on humans as a weaker species, and prohibited any more than the casual acquaintances of the pack children with humans.

Overall, I really enjoyed it, and I would be looking forward to seeing the movie (out 1/26/07) if only it hadn't gotten such bad reviews, and I heard it deviated greatly from this book which it was based on. But I can't resist a vampire or werewolf flick, so I'll probably just wait for it to come out on DVD. More details on the movie can be found at The Unofficial Annette Curtis Klause Site, the director's site or the official MGM website.

BookCrossing journal page for this book

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I enjoy your book reviews. I'm trying to start a user-submitted review site (www.lotsopinions.com) and was looking for quality book reviews. I was wondering if you'd be interested in submitting any of your reviews. Any article you post would contain a link to your blog, so it would also be a way to promote your blog. Let me know what you think, thanks!