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reviews_and_ramblings ([personal profile] reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2010-08-11 09:27 pm

Blood Moon by M.J. O’Shea

Blood Moon is the second book I read by this author, and where the previous one was a coming of age story about two high school students, this is a “trendy” vampire romance. I use the word “trendy” since I think it follows a bit the today love among teenagers for young vampires and werewolves, see the Twilight saga and related.

Noah and Zack, the two heroes in this romance, are maybe a little older, 21 years old, but they are not much more adult. Zack is still spending most of his free time with his family and he was not able to break the umbilical cord with his mother; maybe he was traumatized when he “lost” his best friend, and love of his life, at 18 years old: he grew up with Noah, and as soon as he moved from being a child to being a young adult, he associated love, and sex, with Noah. But as he is not independent now, he was not precocious then, and so he was 18 years old at the time he found the courage to kiss his best friend. And one kiss was everything he got since the morning after Noah told him it was better they never seen each other again. Now three years later, Zack is still “mourning” the loss.

When Noah suddenly reappears in his life, even if he is not exactly the same as before, Zack doesn’t see the reason to send him away: three years are a long time, and Zack understood that he is no able to forget him. And then vampires are trendy, as I said before, and if they are also independently wealthy and with a good fashion instinct, well, they make also a good boyfriend.

If the feeling is that Zack and Noah’s life together is not exactly dangerous, even if they try to convince the reader it’s not like that, well, I think you are right; in a perfect “teenager” video game perspective, life is a forever, and death is not a game over, but merely a stop here and start from beginning. Nothing really bad happens, and real confrontation is always delayed. Everyone is beautiful and sexy and ordinary concerns, like how you will explain to your mother that you will be never more able to join her on Sunday lunch, or that you can’t attend daily courses at college, are something you will face later, always later.

In Zack and Noah’s new world, everyone is young, and also your enemy is handsome. There is no drama or regret in being a vampire, no dark and gothic thoughts, and maybe for the first time, a vampire story didn’t give me an oppressive and gloomy feeling; being turned is more a party than a condemnation, and not even that is the moment when this young men will grow, on the contrary, it seems to be another excuse to not growing at all.

Blood Moon is a fresh and cute story that I think will appeal to a young or very young target. Or to an older reader who prefers paranormal stories not being too much dark.

http://republicapress.com/blood-moon.aspx

Amazon Kindle: Blood Moon

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle