Dark Kiss by Michelle Rowen
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Pages: 348 (Paperback)
Series: Nightwatchers #1
Rating: 
I don’t do dangerous. Smart, über-careful, ordinary Samantha-that’s me. But I just couldn’t pass up a surprise kiss from my number-one unattainable crush. A kiss that did something to me…something strange. Now I feel hungry all the time, but not for food. It’s like part of me is missing-and I don’t know if I can get it back.
Then there’s Bishop. At first I thought he was just a street kid, but the secrets he’s keeping are as intense as his unearthly blue eyes. If he’s what I think he is, he may be the only one who can help me. But something terrifying is closing in, and the one chance Bishop and I have to stop it means losing everything I ever wanted and embracing the darkness inside me…
This is a DNF review. Which means everything should be taken with a grain of salt. However, Harlequin Teen was kind enough to provide this ARC to me and I felt I should at least take the time to explain why I couldn’t make it all the way through.
It had something to do with this:
The writing made me go:
The Characters were like:
And I had to stop before I was driven to:
Maybe I should have kept up with it, because most people seem to really enjoy this book. But I found the writing extremely telling. The main character, Samantha tells us a lot about herself in a very awkward manner rather than showing us who she is. Thus I had very little invested in either her or Bishop. Since I didn’t connect to her, I found it hard to connect to the world and to, in turn, stay interested in the novel.
It was like one of those avalanches started by a single stone. I don’t want to hear that you were acting out because of your parent’s divorce so you tried shoplifting and, since that didn’t work, making out with your crush was another option. It was very disingenuous to me as a character voice and I couldn’t relate to how she expressed herself. Sure, the back story is there but the emotion is not. The frustration, the sense of helplessness and impotence, the uncontrollable urge to lash out – all of this was missing and replaced with a fairly lucid, detached personality reflecting on her state of being with all the emotional investment that I usually give to my breakfast cereal.
I would suggest this book for fans of City of Bones or Twilight – but I would also suggest reading the first chapter and half and deciding whether you bond with the protagonist and the writing style before purchasing.
Kat Kennedy
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