My wife and I met the author of this book at Conbust – that’s the Smith College sci-fi and general geekery convention where we’ve shown the Smithee Awards for the past few years. Now that I’ve (finally!) read this book, I can watch the movie version of it – a movie which the author really, really dislikes.
There’s a good deal of affection for bad movies in the book – at one point, the main character bonds with some newfound friends by hanging out and watching cheesy monster movies, with commentary in the style of MST3K. Still, it’s got to be tough to see a story that you’ve created turned into something that the characters within it would mock.
In a lot of ways, this book is the Anti-Twilight. It’s the story of a mythical monster (female werewolf instead of male vampire in this case) who falls obsessively in love with an ordinary human, but this story is told from the monster’s point of view. The first half of the book seems a little cloying as the whole love story develops. Just like a werewolf though, things change, and sometimes violently.
There are plenty of clues that the relationship will not turn out all nice happy and sparkly. Frightened humans react like prey, and the instinct of a werewolf is to hunt – there’s a line from the movie Heathers that sprang to mind while I was reading: “Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullsh*t now has a body count.”
I’m not going to say any more about this book. It’s too tough to review without going all fan-boy enthusiastic and posting a slew of spoilers. I recommend you go out, buy a copy of the book, and read it. I’ll let you know about the movie version later…
Pages: 264
Total page count: 7868
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