Vampire Kisses (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It first happened when I was five..." (more)
Key Phrases: serpent knocker, creepy man, spider ring, Nerd Boy, Trevor Mitchell, Snow Ball (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up-Raven, 16, doesn't fit in at school or home. This goth-girl is obsessed with vampires and when a new family moves into the old town mansion, she is convinced that the son, Alexander, is a vampire. The story swirls around and through sibling rivalry, peer relationships, friendships, and love. Raven is a feisty protagonist with a quick wit and a real sense of self. She defends herself and her friends, often besting her peers with humor and a quick tongue. As her connection with Alexander deepens, she comes to understand her family better. It is through his shadowy character that readers are kept off balance. Schreiber weaves a tale that is more about acceptance and friendship than about vampire behavior and culture, and sustains a tone that draws readers to the characters rather than to horrific plot developments that would keep them reading. There is far less intensity than in Annette Curtis Klause's Silver Kiss (Laurel-Leaf, 1992) and less moodiness than that found in Amelia Atwater-Rhodes's Midnight Predator (2002) and Shattered Mirror (2001, both Delacorte). While the ending isn't tied up in a neat and pretty bow, it fits the style and tone. All in all, a good read for those who want a vampire love story without the gore.
Molly S. Kinney, Peach Public Libraries, Fort Valley, GA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. Sixteen-year-old Raven is a Goth surrounded by "lesser" folks: her parents have transformed themselves from hippie to corporate, and her only friend at school is an outsider everyone picks on. In Raven's rich imaginary life, she is bold and special and in love with the idea of meeting a vampire. Schreiber uses a careful balance of humor, irony, pathos, and romance as she develops a plot that introduces the possibility of a real vampire--in the form of an extra-handsome boy, of course-- while exploring how a girl like Raven finds ways to cope with a bully who is both class- and gender-conscious of his supposed superiority. Raven's voice is immediately charming, in spite of her alleged bravado and coldheartedness. Her hometown could be any Small Town, USA, and its possibly haunted mansion just lightens the scene rather than making the story silly. This tale slides down easily and will be welcomed by Goths willing to look on the lighter side of their own culture as well as by readers who have an openminded appreciation for the vagaries of their peers and, perhaps, of themselves. Francisca Goldsmith
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (August 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006009334X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060093341
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #46,773 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 1 in The Vampire Kisses Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, July 18, 2006

By	TeensReadToo.com "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vampire Kisses (Paperback)

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).

43 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Becaue We Need Another Cliched-Out Vampire Novel, September 6, 2005

By	Jordana Slayer "Sci-Fi Fan" (NY) - See all my reviews

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.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars oh, please, October 24, 2005

By	N. Maro "niki" (nj) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.