Review: The Silver Kiss By Annette Curtis Klause

Book: The Silver Kiss
By: Annette Curtis Klause
Published: October 1992
Published By: Laurel Leaf Books

Description: Zoe is wary when, in the dead of night, the beautiful yet frightening Simon comes to her house. Simon seems to understand the pain of loneliness and death and Zoe's brooding thoughts of her dying mother.


Simon is one of the undead, a vampire, seeking revenge for the gruesome death of his mother three hundred years before. Does Simon dare ask Zoe to help free him from this lifeless chase and its insufferable loneliness?

My Thoughts: Picture sad whiny teen who "no one understands" and you've got the makings of this book. It's like the extreme of some of the key things I like in books to the extent that I no longer like it. There's too much teen angst, too much self pity, too much selfishness, too much insta love, and too much of just everything teen.

First we have Simon, a vampire who gives Edward a run for his money in the self loathing category. He's just got all sorts of internal battles and it bleeds all over the page.  He goes around drinking women and then leaving them alive enough, and just being there with no real purpose. He doesn't believe he is capable of love until he begins to love a cat who later dies. His brother (who's a baby vamp because he was turned when he was a little kid and now ant control his urges) is killing women all over the place, but since he's older (in vampire years) than Simon, Simon has a hard time trying to stop him. Simon meets a woman and starts to like her. For him to be 300 years old, he doesn't seem to have grown up at all and still behaves as if he's the same age she is.

Zoe is selfish and seems to beg for your pity. Her mother's dying of cancer and every other page seems to say "Look at me, my mother is dying and my father is beginning to feel sad. I'm all alone and no one cares. Feel sorry for me. No one understands me. Wahhh Wahhh Wahhh." Furthermore, she feels that her turmoil is so much worse than everyone else and that no one else is allowed to be upset for their own issues because obviously her issue beats theirs. I wanted to just smack her multiple times during the book. It's okay to feel sad, and it's okay to want support from those around you, but what I get from her that she wanted everyone to pity her and feel sorry for her and coddle her and  say "Oh you poor poor baby" while she soaks it up.

Even the love between Zoe and Simon sucks. First of all, besides agreeing that they are both dealing with death in different ways, what do they know about each other. Zoe knows Simon's story, but who is he really. What does he like to do for fun? What about Zoe? Simon knows that her mother's dying and her fathers never there, he knows that she likes writing poetry. That's it. They don't know each others mannerisms, or fantasy's. They know almost nothing about each other and all of a sudden there's this all consuming love thing between them. Really? REALLY??

If it wasn't already obvious, I hated this book. I will be deleting the audiobook format from my iPod and never ever look at it again. Thank goodness I only borrowed it from the library. Even the conversation and way the book was written wasn't great. It didn't flow and much of it seemed too proper. Honestly, I have a whole lot more to say on the subject of this book, but I feel it would be too mean so I'll just give my rating. 1 Star (only because I don't have a pic for 0 stars.)