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60 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Becaue We Need Another Cliched-Out Vampire Novel, September 6, 2005
This review is from: Vampire Kisses (Hardcover)
I am a vampire novel nut, and thus have read pretty much EVERY YA vampire book on the market. So I can say with real experience, this is one of the worst vampire books I have ever read, second only to RL Stein's travesty, "Dangerous Girls".
The main character, a "Goth" girl imaginatively named "Raven", is a walking Mary-Sue cliché for gothic characters. She loves wearing black clothes and spider rings, hanging out in graveyards, dreaming of hot vampire boys, dressing up as a preppy tennis player for Halloween (no, it's true) and making fun of the "popular" kids, and can always come out on top in a clash of wits with the shamefully stupid and typical popular kids (who all wear Tommy Hilfiger, by the way). And for some reason, despite the fact that she claims everyone in her town "hates" her, she is never persecuted, and is in fact even the secret desire of *gasp* the most popular boy in school, with whom Raven willingly makes out, even though she claims to hate him!
As if the faux-angst teen melodrama wasn't enough, Schreiber throws in a half-baked, again clichéd-out vampire plot worthy of the late, great "Goosebumps" series. A hot Goth boy moves into town who is: apparently foreign (with a slight accent, even!), lives in a huge old manor nobody has lived in for years, isn't seen during the daytime, only pops out at night (conveniently in the graveyard where Raven spends her time), and drops terrible hints all over the place about his true nature (think Dracula's "I never drink...wine."). Things just spiral down from here, and inevitably end up at the evil of all high school evils, the PROM!
The characters are shallow, the plot is even less deep, and the extent of Raven and her vampire love-boys connection is this: "I'm a hot goth boy." "I'm a hot goth girl who loves hot goth boys." "I call this town Dullsville." "Oh, my God, I call this town Dullsville, too!" (no, I promise, that last exchange ACTUALLY happens in the book) "We're meant for each other!"
Ellen Schriber clearly has no idea how contemporary high schools work. If she did, she would know that Goths are no longer the minority, even in small towns (I once lived in a community of 4,000 people in the deserts of Arizona, and a good 20 of the kids at the high school were Goth). This wouldn't even work as a parody of the YA vampire genre, because even if Schreiber didn't quite make it there, you could tell that she was at least trying for a credible gothic love story, and NOT a parody. This is to vampire novels what Star Wars 3 is to the rest of the Star Wars series: a poorly-written drama that would have been better off as a comedy.
This book is obviously aimed at the pre-teen set, and will most likely be worshipped by young girls who have yet to enter high school. This brings NOTHING new to the vampire genre. If you want a genuinely GOOD YA book with a realistic and amusing look at the teen Goth and vampire culture, try SWEETBLOOD by Pete Hautman. But DON'T buy Vampire Kisses.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
oh, please, October 24, 2005
This review is from: Vampire Kisses (Hardcover)
Raven, her name and character are both equal in their lack of originality. The fact that she angsts and revels over the fact that she is oh-so-goth-and-angst annoyed me to the extreme. She was a very shallow character, who's only depth was given by the fact that she like "goth" things, her goth boots, her goth clothes, hot goth boys... Truly, this book had the emotional depth of sponge-bob square-pants. I read this book several months ago, so I can't go much further into detail, but the only good thing about this book that I can say is that I didn't buy it.
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, July 18, 2006
Sixteen-year old Raven Madison started her obsession with the dark side in kindergarten. While the teacher was asking her young students what they wanted to be when they grew up and getting the typical responses of nurse, fire fighter, and football player, young Raven answered the question the only way she knew how--she wanted to grow up to be a vampire.
Raven's parents, Sarah and Paul, were typical hippies who spent their early years together waxing poetic about love and the music of the Grateful Dead. When Raven came along, they became slightly less hippie, in that they moved into an apartment instead of living in their Volkswagon van. Raven's first years were spent surrounded by lava lamps and glow-in-the-dark posters, with her parents playing games with her, eating junk food, and watching old horror films on the small black and white television. All of that changed, though, when two things happened--her mother dared to give birth to a brother, endearingly termed Nerd Boy, and they forced her to go to school, every day.
Now sixteen, Raven is still the outcast that she found herself to be when she proclaimed her life's ambition was to be a vampire. Now the only goth girl in a town dubbed Dullsville, Raven is still a social outcast who enjoys horror movies, black lipstick, and pushing her parents to the edge. Raven has no real friends except for Becky, a timid farm girl who lives on the wrong side of the tracks. None, that is, until the Sterling family moves into the dark, abandoned mansion sitting on top of Benson Hill.
Suddenly the whole town is talking about the mysterious Sterlings, especially the teenage son, Alexander. It's said he hangs out in the cemetery at night, that he's brought bats to town, that he's pale and is never seen outside during the daytime. Could Alexander be a real, live vampire? If so, he could be Raven's ticket out of this loser town. But does she really want to leave her family and real life behind to spend her days sleeping in a coffin? Or is all the hype just that--the ramblings and crazy speculation of a town who can't stand for anyone to be different?
As Raven gets closer to Alexander, she realizes that being a vampire might not matter so much as being loved for who she is. As she deals with the small-minded people in her town, she just might find out that she's not so different from the residents of Dullsville as she thought she was.
VAMPIRE KISSES is a good start to this entertaining vampire series by Ellen Schreiber. Although there are parts that appear too shallow for Raven's character, and way too many exclamation points for my taste, I still recommend the story, and look forward to reading the next book in the series, Vampire Kisses 2: Kissing Coffins (Vampire Kisses).
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