Title: Dangerous Girls and Dangerous Girls: Taste of Night
Author: R.L. Stine
HarperCollins
Rating: 2/5
(Dangerous Girls) Destiny Weller and her twin sister, Livvy, return from their summer vacation with an overpowering thirst — an inhuman desire to drink blood.
Have they turned into vampires?
How will they keep their horrifying secret from their family and friends?
And can they find a way to become human again … before it’s too late? (goodreads.com)
(Dangerous Girls: Taste of Night) Destiny Weller and her twin sister, Livvy, were as close as two sisters could be-until Livvy chose to become a vampire, leaving Destiny behind. Now Destiny will do anything to bring Livvy back to the family. But in Livvy’s world of endless darkness, she knows there is only one way she and Destiny can be reunited — Destiny must become a vampire too. . . .
Which sister will live to see the glow of the next full moon?
Whose lips will savor the taste of night?
Who will survive? (goodreads.com)
I want to say the plot is your basic, average, every-day YA vampire novel plot. I really, really do. There’s one character who is desperate to remain human; her evil twin, who is a vampire and doesn’t mind killing, and the loads of friends and family, some of whom are given names and a very brief description before being killed off.
Despite spending so much time with Destiny, I really found that I disliked her. Her pressure of Livvy to become human again is distressing. Livvy constantly asks, “Why can’t you see I’m okay like this?”, but Destiny just “knows” her sister isn’t happy, and goes through everything to try to get her sister to come back home. In fact, this remains a huge part of the second novel, and I started losing interest.
I couldn’t get a good grasp of the characters, either. I got their thoughts, their actions, their words, but no emotion. When their friends died, there wasn’t a lot of moping and tears. Destiny was more concerned about people staring at her when she went back to school, than the fact that she had lost a couple of friends. I get that the books are supposed to be about eighteen-year-old girls, but come on. Even eighteen-year-olds get weepy and mopey when their friends die.
All in all, I didn’t enjoy this book too much. I think I’ll give it away. The writing was dull, and some of it was written like someone in high school would: instead of just emphasizing the word “so”, the author not only emphasized it, he dragged it out like so: “soooooo“. I haven’t seen that done, ever, in a published work, but there it is.
I just couldn’t get into this book. I wonder now if all the R.L. Stine books were written like this and I just didn’t notice.
Originally posted on August 29, 2010
Before Midnight 