I picked up Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause in middle school, around the same time I picked up the Night World series by LJ Smith. I prefered Smith’s stories, but Klause stuck in my mind due to solid writing and a moment when my brother thought I was silly for being embarrassed at the word “kiss” in the title.

A friend recently suggested Klause to me, and I’d been meaning to catch up on my supernatural teen book obsession — especially because this one agent website ordered writers to keep up with what’s happening in their genre — but I couldn’t remember being wowed by Silver Kiss and wanted to save my free time for writing.

Still, my husband decided we were overdue for a library raid and all the Young Adult books seemed to have been returned that morning because the shelves were glutted. I saw Blood and Chocolate, which hadn’t been in since we moved here, so I sighed, picked it up, and stacked it onto my five others, figuring “I’ve avoided it long enough.”

Since the protagonist is a werewolf with dating issues, and since the title is “blood” and “chocolate” I expected violence (blood) and sex (chocolate). This is part of why I waited so long to read it — I’m not an “intense” sort of girl, and this promised lots of gloopy emotional messiness.

I was pleased, though, because the gloopy emotional messiness was pretty engaging. There’s a lot of making out, nudity, violence, and talk about sex, but the overall premise is solid (a werewolf girl feels like she doesn’t fit in with her disorderly pack, so she takes a shot at making human friends) and I appreciated the ending as rock-solid. I also appreciate Klause as a writer who can make me cheer for characters I didn’t like at first, which I always love in a book.

So I approve. I’d put an age minimum of 16 or 17 on this due to content, but I enjoyed it. Gonna rent the movie — I’m excited to see how they translated the book to film. It should be fun.

Movie [Sunday July 6th]

Watched the movie.

Not awful, but took a lot of liberties as expected. Set in Romania, gave everyone accents, removed all subplot, reduced several great characters to stereotypes, and ignored the last half of the book.

Still better than what Disney did to Ella Enchanted.

Some people will prefer the book, some will prefer the movie. I think it depends on which you get to first. If you like straight-forward action and a girl-against-all-odds with a sexy guy and romantic surroundings, you’ll like the movie. If you like layered stories about lots of diverse and interesting characters, read the book.

Aiden makes the movie. His actor does the best job of any of them, seconded only by Rafe, and he often saves himself and Vivian through daring heroics. In the book, Vivian likes Aiden because he’s sweet and gentle, a new age hippie, very different from the rowdy boys of her pack.

I can’t imagine that anyone who loves one will love the other because they’re so very different. At least, I tend to balk at adaptations that mess with the original, and this messed in pretty fundamental ways, especially with the romance.