CRYPTIC CRAVINGS Review -- Ellen Schreiber

Cryptic Cravings by Ellen Schreiber

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Actual Rating: 1.5 Stars

Man, what a journey. I started Vampire Kisses when the omnibus of the first three was out and number six was a few months away from publication. I thought it was pretty good. It was nothing special, of course, but it was silly and light-hearted while so many other vampire books were mysterious and dark. It was a refreshing change.

After book 8, I think it's time to put this series in its grave. (Or, more adequately, its coffin.) It's been going on for way too long. There's only so long you can continue a book with an OMG-I-love-you-but-you're-a-vampire-and-I-want-you-to-turn-me-but-you-don't-want-to plot and minor subplots that keep the story (barely) rolling. When I read the summary for this book, I almost thought I'd already read it. It was so similar to one of the earlier books, I think it was Coffin Club, that I almost didn't read it. However, if I was going to let the series go, I had to at least give it a decent farewell.

Little did I know that farewell would be a DNF farewell.

This is my first ever official DNF, ever. Others are put on indefinite hold, but I will definitely get back to those in the future. This, however, I felt didn't deserve a revisit later. Vampire Kisses is to date the most cheesy vampire series I've ever read. Alexander isn't even like a vampire at all anymore. He's goofy and silly and not at all evil like all other vampires are. He gives vampires a bad name.

Yeah. Almost like that.

On top of being unbearably cheesy, it's paced really poorly. The scenes are stretched out too long. When I saw that the book was considerably longer than the others, I thought, "Wow. Schreiber really got her stuff together and wrote a decent novel WITH A PLOT." Nahh! Just messing with you. That's not true. I have 100+ pages of proof.

The Vampire Kisses series is one I'm almost sad to see leave my life forever, but on the bright side, now I can save money on the series I'm sure Schreiber won't end until she dies.