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sarahrosebooks's review
4.0
As a self-confessed vampire fiction addict, I've read a lot of novels about vampires. And I admit, in the past few years I've grown tired of it - the likes of Stephenie Meyer and Laurell K. Hamilton have ruined what was once an exciting genre to read (for me). So I came across this book, Killing Kiss by Sam Stone, and read the blurb:
"He's looking for a girl; not just any girl, and dark-haired, brown-eyed Carolyn is the one.
But does Gabriele Caccini, a student at Manchester University, really know what he wants? When a beautiful curvacious blonde comes into his life he starts to question his motives and emotions; even a Seventeenth Century vampire can do that.
Alone in the modern world, limiting his feeds to one a year to avoid detection, Gabriele reflects on the origins of his immortality and questions why it is he who should have the vampire gene, when over four hundred women have not survived his killing kiss...
But at a house party, a fellow student spikes Gabriele's drink with drugs and his self-indulgent musings are suddenly turned upside down..."
And that was enough to hook me. Put it this way: Gabriele (I still have no idea how you pronounce this, even with the hint in the book) is a lonely vampire, a monster, who survives by dipping into a life to find his next feed, and then moving on. He has killed over four hundred women this way, and each time he hopes that this woman will be the one who will survive: but they never are.
What attracted me to this was the idea behind it: the vampire gene. By the end of the book, I had a pretty good idea of where the rest of the series is going to go (time will tell if I'm right or not, as I fully intend to buy the next book soon), but that didn't really disappoint me. The characters are not clean cut, and are not exactly likeable - it's a nice change to get that in a book. You understand Gabriele, with him being the narrator, but you don't exactly like him. The mysterious and alluring blonde who comes into his life, and eventually those others who Gabriele comes into contact with, serve in a way as our own reactions to some of the things he does - he kills women without giving them the choice of whether they want to become like him, he is aloof and arrogant, and self-pitying. Gabriele goes through a change by the end of the book, as all main characters must. He is slightly more likeable by the end.
The reason why I gave it four stars is because I didn't quite like the characters as much as perhaps I as a reader was intended to, and because I guessed the twist before the end.
Despite that, I'm looking forward to reading the next one, and I will treasure my signed copy of this book as I do all signed books. Kudos to Sam Stone for creating a refreshingly different type of vampire.
"He's looking for a girl; not just any girl, and dark-haired, brown-eyed Carolyn is the one.
But does Gabriele Caccini, a student at Manchester University, really know what he wants? When a beautiful curvacious blonde comes into his life he starts to question his motives and emotions; even a Seventeenth Century vampire can do that.
Alone in the modern world, limiting his feeds to one a year to avoid detection, Gabriele reflects on the origins of his immortality and questions why it is he who should have the vampire gene, when over four hundred women have not survived his killing kiss...
But at a house party, a fellow student spikes Gabriele's drink with drugs and his self-indulgent musings are suddenly turned upside down..."
And that was enough to hook me. Put it this way: Gabriele (I still have no idea how you pronounce this, even with the hint in the book) is a lonely vampire, a monster, who survives by dipping into a life to find his next feed, and then moving on. He has killed over four hundred women this way, and each time he hopes that this woman will be the one who will survive: but they never are.
What attracted me to this was the idea behind it: the vampire gene. By the end of the book, I had a pretty good idea of where the rest of the series is going to go (time will tell if I'm right or not, as I fully intend to buy the next book soon), but that didn't really disappoint me. The characters are not clean cut, and are not exactly likeable - it's a nice change to get that in a book. You understand Gabriele, with him being the narrator, but you don't exactly like him. The mysterious and alluring blonde who comes into his life, and eventually those others who Gabriele comes into contact with, serve in a way as our own reactions to some of the things he does - he kills women without giving them the choice of whether they want to become like him, he is aloof and arrogant, and self-pitying. Gabriele goes through a change by the end of the book, as all main characters must. He is slightly more likeable by the end.
The reason why I gave it four stars is because I didn't quite like the characters as much as perhaps I as a reader was intended to, and because I guessed the twist before the end.
Despite that, I'm looking forward to reading the next one, and I will treasure my signed copy of this book as I do all signed books. Kudos to Sam Stone for creating a refreshingly different type of vampire.
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