Blood and Chocolate

I don't love this book but I do like it and I think what kept me from loving it, despite the beautiful metaphors and deadly werewolves, were the characters. I couldn't relate to any of the characters or connect with them, they were all very well developed and I could believe that they were actual people but they weren't people that I would ever want to meet. Vivian our heroine is very confidant she knows that any boy would want her and any boy should want her and this instantly put me off her. I think it's because I couldn't relate to her at all which is what kept me from loving her story.

But it was a very good story and I am glad I stuck with it. A very hot read and it's what I usually expect from a werewolf book – fighting, killing, lusting, and loyalty to the ones you call family.

I partly read this and partly heard this on audio books.

I mentioned before on another review that I really have not read books where Werewolves were the focus other than Twilight. I don't think Twilight really counts because there was so many other things going on and I recently read the Iron Druid Chronicles where there were Werewolves but again only a little, too much going on in them too.

GOODREADS: Vivian Gandillon relishes the change, the sweet, fierce ache that carries her from girl to wolf. At sixteen, she is beautiful and strong, and all the young wolves are on her tail. But Vivian still grieves for her dead father; her pack remains leaderless and in disarray, and she feels lost in the suburbs of Maryland. She longs for a normal life. But what is normal for a werewolf?

Then Vivian falls in love with a human, a meat-boy. Aiden is kind and gentle, a welcome relief from the squabbling pack. He's fascinated by magic, and Vivian longs to reveal herself to him. Surely he would understand her and delight in the wonder of her dual nature, not fear her as an ordinary human would.

Vivian's divided loyalties are strained further when a brutal murder threatens to expose the pack. Moving between two worlds, she does not seem to belong in either. What is she really–human or beast? Which tastes sweeter–blood or chocolate?


ME: I'm dying to read a few books straight that leave me in lala land. It's just not happening before the end of the year. This book is definitely looking at the Werewolf life in a whole other light. This book heavily reminded me of West Side Story only I really really loved West Side Story. So far in the books I've read where there are Werewolves, the Werewolves tend to want to be more human than animal. This is not the case in this book at all. This book is definitely beastly. Vivian is 16 years old and is in a new suburban town, new school, new everything. She is basically struggling with being a human teenage girl with a very grown up Werewolf lifestyle. Vivian is aggressive, she's mean, wicked and very very in tuned with her sexuality. EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE has SEX on the brain. Vivian is trying to bed Aiden, a human boy from school while everyone from her pack that's not mated wants to bed her. We also have her very promiscuous mom wanting to bed the pack leader and is literally fighting over him with another pack member, Astrid. Oh and this Astrid chick... yeah, she's going at it with one of her son's friend, the very teenager Rafe. Right in the pack is often twisted and fine lines are often crossed over to the wrong. CRAZY! This book kind of read like trailer trash...UGH!
Something else that bugged me a whole bunch was the language these teens in the late 90's used... IT TOTALLY WASN'T IN THE LATE 90's! I was a teen in the 90's and we didn't say “let's go to that party tonight, it's going to be wild!” Nope didn't say that. There were other things that kept me thinking this was written in the 70's or early 80's...


On the positive: If I had to find a positive about this book it has to be the very real feelings I felt meant to be a Werewolf. Through Vivian, and of course the author, I felt how right and how amazing it felt to be a Werewolf. If nothing else it is the equivalent to just feeling free and all is right with the world.

Yeah, I didn't like it so much but my son was listening in parts and he liked it, the action parts. So as usual, read it, you might like it.

Peace!