The Silver Kiss - Annette Curtis Klause

The Silver Kiss is a vampire novel by Annette Curtis Klause that was first published in 1990. The version that I have was released on July 1st 2009 by Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers and it also includes two short stories.

Plot

Zoe is having a pretty hard time. Her mum is dying of cancer, she's having a hard time eating and all she wants to do is sleep. Her dad is never there because he is always at the hospital and her best friend doesn't really understand or know what to say to her. Basically, she is all alone.

Simon is a hunter of the night...a vampire and he too is quite alone. Late at night in the park, he notices Zoe and how sad she looks and cannot help but be interested in her. Simon is 300 years old and out to avenge his mothers' death. Having something as strange as death in common only draws Simon and Zoe together and even though she is scared, she just can't help herself.

What I thought
This is the first truly different vampire novel that I have read in quite a while. Both main characters are not your typical stereotypes for this genre and I completely loved reading something different for once.

Zoe isn't your average heroine. She is complex in her own right and has a lot of problems. Surely adding a hot vampire into the mix can't be helping her any. Even though the story is so short, her character seems to change a lot in the way that she thinks and acts and I think that the author pulled this aspect off really well. I didn't really realise just how much she had changed until I finished the whole story. Even though Zoe is quite scared of Simon to begin with, I think that she cannot help being drawn to him and not just because he can make her feel things that no one else can. As she is so alone, it seems that the attention and company of someone else is very welcome and it possibly could have been anyone, not specifically just Simon.

Without the addition of The Summer of Love (the first short story), I don't think that I would have liked Simon as much as I did. This part really showed his true character and some of the things that he had to go through in life (or death). I really felt his compassion for the cat in this part and it made me think differently about vampires as main character. Not only do we get Simon's history from the 70s, we also get a huge chunk about when he lived in England. The character development here was some of the best I have ever seen in such a short space of time. Klause made Simon seem like such a normal guy, rather than a typical vampire and it was clear that his past experiences made him who and what he is now. He could have easily been a lot better than Edward Cullen given the chance and a couple of hundred more pages.

I do feel that I didn't get enough of the relationship between Zoe and Simon and this was mainly due to the book being so short. The Silver Kiss would have been an amazing longer novel if some things had been expanded on but it was also extremely good for the length. For me, the relationship was quite one sided because of two things. 1. As I said before, it seemed like Zoe could have been like this with anyone and 2. Simon's feelings for Zoe are described in much more details than her feelings for him. Again, this could have been expanded on if the book was longer.

The ending was a complete shocker. I didn't see it coming at all and while I thought it fit the story extremely well, I was left disappointed. I really wished for a different ending for both Zoë and Simon but I understood completely why it was written that way.

Although the two extra short stories in my edition don't make any difference really to the main story itself, I thought it was a nice addition. One story is set many years before the main story and the second is set after it. I really enjoyed the fact that each main character had their own beginning and end and I felt like it helped me to understand both characters much better.

The whole book is actually really short at only 234 pages. This includes the main story, both short stories and an introduction to the author. Needless to say, it didn't take me long to read at all and while I do love to be completely distracted by a good, long book, I welcomed this chance. It was very easy to read in one sitting so it would be great for train journeys etc. Sometimes there is nothing worse than having to put down a book you are totally into because you just want to keep going and I'm glad I didn't have that problem with this one.

I would recommend this book to vampire fans of any age. The Silver Kiss is a love story with a twist and there is no chance of you guessing how it ends. One of the best I have read.