A religious, slightly more grounded take on the teenage vampire love story.
In Whittam’s debut novel, a teenage girl rushes into marriage with her best guy friend after a brief romance with a vampire leaves her pregnant.
Kara moves with her family from Phoenix to a small Arizona town after graduating from high school in 1963. On the first night in her new home, she meets devilishly handsome Nate, who saves her from a javelina as she searches for her dog. The attraction between Kara and Nate is immediate, and the two begin to date, but their relationship quickly hits a few snags: Nate won’t go to church with Kara on Sundays, and he wants her to stay with him instead of going to college in the fall. And he happens to be a vampire. Shocked, Kara asks for time to think over their future together, to which he concedes. Nate’s hotheaded brother, Josh, however, flies into a rage at the news and attacks Kara, sending her to the hospital. Kara decides to end her relationship with Nate but not before making love to him. Kara’s Bible in hand, Nate leaves on a journey of redemption, while Kara moves on and begins college. The novel seems to subscribe to the same message of abstinence found in genre heavy-hitter Twilight because Kara soon realizes her first and only night of passion left her pregnant. But unlike Bella, Kara has enough sense to forgo the life of murderous urges that Nate would offer her. She writes to her friend Fred for advice, and he proposes marriage to avoid a scandal. Their newlywed bliss is cut short when Fred is shipped off to Vietnam, and the two are forced to deal with the very human stress of being separated by war. The novel certainly recycles many recent vampire themes: Stalking is considered a romantic gesture when committed by an undead hunk. But in a healthy twist, Nate finds motivation to stay clean that isn’t Kara, even if that plotline comes off a bit bland or preachy at times.
A religious, slightly more grounded take on the teenage vampire love story.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615927152
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Kathleen Whittam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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