Annette Curtis Klause

this is really messy ya fiction that goes to some fucking intense (and i think, occasionally, irresponsible) places. i know i say this a lot about books like this but it really does feel like a similar energy to the kinds of writing i always really vibed with in fanfic but never really intentionally seek out in profic and i really do need to do something about that because i frequently end up loving it.

also it does that super fanficcy thing where it refers back to characters’ backstories show more in a way that makes you wonder if you missed a previous book or something even though this is the only book in the series. perfect. exquisite. i’ll take three.

i just fucking adore this kind of heart-on-its-sleeve bullshit. and this one also does that thing where it feels like a pretty restrained, conventional narrative for a good long while and the intensity just very abruptly spikes and it’s like “oh! ok. we’re doing this now i guess!” for the rest of the book.

that kind of thing can frankly actually be detrimental if it just doesn’t land for you for whatever reason, and for me at least i find my reactions to this kind of thing to be pretty fickle, and in this particular case i actually found myself completely onboard with the abrupt shift (... heh, shift).

like there is for sure shit in here that i could be obstinate & complain about if i really wanted to, and i wouldn’t even be wrong because i actually do think a lot of it is big-P Problematic, but for whatever reason this particular book just really lulled me into enjoying it anyway, and i like liking things so i’m just gonna go ahead and let myself like this.

if you’ve followed my reviews for a while in one form/venue or another you might be thinking, “wait, robin, it sounds an awful lot like you’re describing a guilty pleasure, you said those aren’t a thing.” but i promise you that is not what’s happening here? nor am i “enjoying it ironically” (something i basically refuse to do, heck something i might be incapable of doing). my enjoyment is genuine. i will certainly allow that this is a “problematic fave,” which i suppose some people consider synonymous with a “guilty pleasure,” but i still think there’s an important distinction to be had there.

enjoying (or not enjoying) art is an inherently dialectical process and the meaning isn’t produced wholly in the media itself or wholly in you yourself, but rather in the relationship between those two things. i do not feel guilty about enjoying blood and chocolate. (wow that sounds like a whole thing out of context lmao.)

i am uncomfortable with some of the messages that can be derived about relationships from gabriel’s 180-degree turn from a guy made of literally nothing but red flags to the embodiment of gruff but tender masculinity, given the patriarchy-shaped patterns of abuse many women are subjected to in their searches for mates, and i think especially for a book marketed largely towards young women this does them a serious disservice.

but i’m an adult and i know better so i can separate my enjoyment of this from its problematic elements as long as i responsibly call them out when discussing the book. and against what i thought were pretty long odds when i realized where this story was going, i do like gabriel & vivian’s romance. i do like the guy he turns into later in the book, no matter how blatantly unearned that turn was. and i’m perfectly willing to just allow myself to enjoy that, in spite of all the fairly obvious reasons why i “shouldn’t.”

hell, his ideas about werewolves having an instinctive need to dominate & protect are fucking hot and i could easily see them being rewardingly incorporated into a power exchange relationship? and also like… even in the context where they came up in this book, they actually aren’t horrible? he’s basically explaining why relationships between werewolves & humans are inherently unsafe, but he’s doing it in a very empathetic, nonjudgmental way. and just… if that really is how things work in this world, i’m actually super behind his take?

but what really helped the most is that it wasn’t until vivian had been through something similar to what gabriel had been through, and he shared his story with her, helping her begin to recover from her trauma, that i was really sold on them. because their relationship really is built on them being kindred spirits.

i’m deliberately ignoring something rather huge here, and that’s the fact that vivian is 16 and gabriel is 24. and, i mean… some of the discourse about age gaps in romantic & sexual relationships can be overly rigid. like, as someone who was simultaneously being emotionally abused & manipulated by someone roughly my own age in a “romantic” relationship while also being in a much healthier fuckbuddies-shaped relationship with someone who was almost twice my age, i just don’t see how so many people can see this as such a one-size fits all kind of thing? but in the case of a 24-year old adult man and a 16-year old high school girl, i feel pretty fucking okay saying that this is one of the clearest-cut cases of “that shit is not okay.” and again this is an aspect of the story where i think the book pretty clearly fails its target audience, because holy shit should you never be drilling into people’s heads that that kind of thing is normal.

for the record, i also will briefly mention that i also don’t really think the way this book treats suicide is responsible at all, again especially in view of its target audience. i don’t super want to get into it in any more depth than that? and i am sorry if anyone feels let down by my bringing it up but not really feeling super comfy getting into it in depth, but i frankly just wouldn’t feel responsible if i didn’t mention it at all.

but, again, that really isn’t what decides whether i like a given story or not, it’s just context that i feel responsible to put out there. because in spite of all of that, i really like this book.

it really helps that vivian is actually super into being a werewolf? she isn’t all angsty & self-hating, she thinks her werewolf self is beautiful (because it fucking is) and she is hurt & confused & angry when aiden can’t see that. and gabriel seeing that & understanding it and talking her through it was a pretty huge breakthrough for me with that character. but really i just love vivian as a narrator, and i actually got pretty fucking miffed when a reviewer i usually like found her annoying because she really is my favorite thing about this book.

this is not only a problematic fave, it’s a problematic fave that has me excited to branch out and discover whole new problematic faves in this genre, because i understand that both a lot of the things that i found uncomfy in this book and a lot of the things i liked about it are basically genre staples. and yeah, i can for sure deal with more of this. show less

You know how I feel about werewolf books. I hate the whole submissive female werewolf thing and I hate it even more when it strays into abusive territory as it so often does. (I'm looking at you, Carrie Vaughn.) I also really do not like the idea that werewolves are the same as wolves because, no, there are human bits in there, too. Obviously Klause has read my mind and given me this book to show me how she cares. Or maybe she just wrote it because she's awesome. Whatever.

In this book there show more was no mistaking that Vivian and the other werewolves (loup garou, as they prefer to be called) are both human and werewolf. They walk a fine line of blending in and staying apart and that's obvious in everything they do. It's especially hard for Vivian who's a teenager in love with a human--or a "meat-boy" as her pack calls him. She wants what all the other human girls have, she doesn't want to give in and unquestioningly accept everything her family (pack) tells her, and she's trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs. I hate to be the one who says "anti-Twilight" but it kind of is--it's the desperation of teenaged love and hormones with an otherworldly edge, but when stalking comes up it's shown to be bad and dangerous, not loving and caring.

I feel as if I should also mention that sex is not taboo in this book. Vivian embraces her own sexuality and accepts herself for what she is. I understand this sort of behavior got the book banned in places. I frown at those places.

I have to admit to falling for Gabriel. I'm weak that way, but when someone has the superior power (strength, age, wisdom) and refuses to use it to dominate someone with lesser power I am right there. Gabriel is the new pack leader, Vivian is accidentally supposed to be his mate, she isn't sure, and he doesn't force her. He flirts, he teases, he makes it all very appealing, but he also talks to her like an equal, shares his own story, and does the right thing when it would have been easier to do the wrong one. Vivian learns those lessons, too.

I loved this book. This was just what I needed to make me less averse to werewolves in love. show less

Blood and Chocolate is a werewolf book that feels like a cross between Sons of Anarchy and True Blood, but for a YA/New Adult audience, with strong 90s vibes. Absolutely a book that Stephenie Myer would have encountered prior to writing the Twilight series, because I saw some distinct similarities (although the MC isn’t like Bella - it’s the human dude she’s interested in who is the bland Bella type).

The werewolf MC actually undergoes a grotesque change each time she morphs into her show more werewolf form. It’s not about staying pretty, it’s about transforming into something dangerous and wild! This is presented as a positive thing, and I haven’t seen that in many other books. It was definitely my favorite aspect of the story.

Women characters are more hostile to other women than I would’ve liked, but the hostility does technically fit the whole werewolf aggression thing. However, it felt verbally derogatory towards women throughout in a way that made me uncomfortable. I think the author wanted to make the werewolves so unlike humans that their behavior wouldn’t be applicable to the reader. But as a reader, it feels impossible not to apply it, given that the werewolves do appear to be like humans much of the time.

Also, the relationship between the 16 year old MC and a 24 year old werewolf (who the MC’s mom had previously pursued romantically) totally creeped me out.

Blood and Chocolate was an interesting read because it’s a book that influenced the genre and other authors, but too problematic to be an enjoyable read. show less

It would appear that I disappeared for two weeks after reading this, ostensibly because it was so bad. No. I was so busy and flustered IRL that--I didn't have it in me to sit down and properly review this. Now, I can. I absolutely loved this book when I read it in fifth grade, twenty-five years ago as of this writing. I read it a few times in middle school after. Fast forward to now. I actually tried reading this a couple of times and got annoyed. Now, I wanted to just sit down and finish it show more so I could review it and note to myself, "I already read this and here's what I thought."

After DNF'ing several books with bland, simplistic, or bare-bones descriptions, the purple prose in this was refreshing. Whole way through, even, for the most part. As long as nature or day or night was being described. If it was a person or a feeling, I quickly grew annoyed. That's part of purple prose, though. I remembered most of this as an adult, but had totally managed to forget Christopher. Good on me. What an insufferable asshat. His brother is a dick, condescending and controlling to Zoe; but he's arrogant in a different way that Christopher is. Christopher is a pompous brat and ugh, every time he was on the page I yearned to return to "Interview with a Vampire," which handled child vampires in an altogether different way through Claudia. And I hated Claudia back when I read Anne Rice as a teen. But I liked how her character moved through the world and had realistic emotions about forever being trapped in a child's body.

Simon's...increasingly, when he was on the page, I shook my head and thought, "And you will grow up, sink deep into literature, and star in a book called 'Seven Types of Ambiguity,'" because wow, this book's Simon and that book's Simon had definite similarities beyond their names and ability to charm others. The author wanted him to be a wounded bird of sorts, and for the audience to feel bad. Instead, I found his circumstances and the way he handled them, annoying. Simon, as a vampire, shares story beats and some characterization with Spike from BTVS: Spike rides around in a car with a dirty windshield and wraps himself in a dirty blanket to cover what his leather trench coat does not. Simon sleeps in a boarded up building, and wedges himself into a tiny space rather than, you know, steal blankets out of something and spread out reasonably. Both become obsessed with a teen girl far younger than them and engage in victim blaming and attempts at grooming. They're manipulative.

And both get monologues as the sun rises. Instead of staked. How cheap. Where's my big fight scene? I never felt like either character earned "monologue as the sun rises". No, I wanted their objects of obsession to fight them.

I congratulate Annette Curtis Klause on her success, and I'm a little sad that my nostalgia is streaked through with bitterness of adulthood who frowns upon weird power dynamics in books like this. I contemplate reading some Mary Downing Hahn to make myself feel better. I'd still recommend this to people, though. Even though my opinion has changed, I'm still glad I got to read this again. show less