For my second book for the R.I.P. II Challenge I chose Annette Curtis Klause’s NY Times bestselling book, Blood and Chocolate. Having really enjoyed the film, despite its flaws, I was interested in seeing just how different the story was in its original novel form. My motivation for reading this increased after the intensely satisfying experience I had with Klause’s latest novel, Freaks. With Freaks she proved herself a writer worth reading and thus I picked up Blood and Chocolate with very little trepidation.

I will forewarn you: if you have not seen the film or read the book and have intentions of experiencing either from an unspoiled viewpoint, you may want to skip the rest of this review as this is a case where I really cannot talk about either without giving away some plot points.

And why is that? , you might ask. Simply because the novel and the film are so different from each other that I find it difficult to review the book without references to the film.

Let me start off by saying that, book or film, I find Blood and Chocolate to be one of the most delicious, pardon the pun, book titles I have ever come across. It is a quote from Hermann Hesse in Steppenwolf:

“In fear I hurried this way and that. I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other”.

Apart from the quote itself, a few character names and minor plot points are about all that the film has in common with the novel that inspired it.

The basic plot of the novel is centered on teenage protagonist Vivian Gandillion. Vivian and her family are Loup-Garoux, werewolves in the common tongue. They are part of an ever diminshing tribe of shapeshifters, blessed by the goddess of the moon with the power to transform from human to wolf form and back at will. Only at the time of the full moon is this change wrought without the consent of the individual. Unlike the stereotypical view of werewolves, the Loup-Garoux are presented as a different race of people, content to live their lives without harming humans. Like any family, however, some are better at following rules than others.

The story in both the film and the novel begins with Vivian witnessing the death of her father after a member of the packs’ lack of self-control alerts the townspeople of their existence (in the film her mother dies as well). The group then has to move to a temporary location whilst safer accomodations are found. It is here, in the suburbs of Maryland, that the bulk of Vivian’s story takes place.

The death of Vivian’s father finds the pack leaderless, and an Ordeal, a fight amongst the males for control, is called. As the time for the Ordeal approaches, various members of the pack act in both the functional and dysfunctional ways of any family. Vivian finds herself, as any normal teenage girl would, in want of companionship. A poem about a wolf written by a boy in her school leads Vivian to seek him out and begin a relationship with him. A relationship with a “meat-boy” is frowned upon by the rest of the pack, but Vivian is strong willed and determined to what she wants and only what she wants.

What follows is the story of a girl struggling against her familial and societal expectations…that she remain in the pack, that she mate with the soon-to-be-chosen leader of the pack, that she keep her other life a secret from her new friends, etc.

Unlike the movie, where the predicted leader, Gabriel, is a bit one dimensional and slanted towards being the bad guy, the novel is very ambigous about who Gabriel is and what his intentions are until very late in the story. The film presents Blood and Chocolate as a battle between Vivian’s desire to honor her family traditions and heritage and her desire to choose who she will love and give herself to. The movie presents the pack as about to fall under the leadership of a Gabriel hell bent on maintaining separation of the races at any cost, something Vivian sees as wrong despite what happened to her father.

The novel presents Vivian’s relationship with the human, Aiden (in both versions), as one in which she is out to defy her mother, her people, the expectations of her…everything. Vivian in the novel is presented as a very self-centered girl (fairly typical teenage behavior) who seems unwilling to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. Much of her relationship with Aiden, although it is clear she does really care about him, appears to be more about her wanting to push the boundaries, wanting to engage in sexual relations with him, than it is about a much deeper and long term relationship. It should come as no surprise then that, unlike the movie, when Vivian finally reveals her true self to Aiden, he is not accepting and loving, he is repulsed and afraid. Although this fear shows itself briefly in the movie, the novels treatment of Aiden is quite different. He never gets over his fear of Vivian and his rejection of her causes her to exhibit a pattern of uncontrollable behavior that results in her believing that she is out killing humans while in her wolf form.

You may think I’ve revealed the entire novel by this point, but there is much more than goes on. The aforementioned mystery involving humans being killed is only one of those things.

Like I have said before, I really enjoyed the film version of Blood and Chocolate. It is a story that is weak in many places, one that could have elevated it from a good to a great film if they had left more of the depth of the novel in place. My enjoyment of the film made reading the book a very interesting experience. I spent much of the book wondering just what direction Klause was taking with the story because it was so different from what was shown in the film.

Blood and Chocolate was a good read. I think Freaks is far and a way a more well-written novel, in part because so much of the backbone of Freaks is based on real people and a real period of time. That kind of source material gives Klause a very strong foundation from which to have written Freaks. Blood and Chocolate, while not as well done, in my opinion, is still a very good book and I can see why it hit the bestseller list. More than anything I was very surprised by this book because it was so different than the film. I would love to hear Klause’s thoughts on the film. I cannot imagine that she was pleased with all the changes.

As I have already mentioned, my overall impression of the book is very positive. It is a read I would recommend. However

BIG ENDING SPOILER

I am still, several days after finishing it, unsure how I feel about the ending. In the end Vivian’s relationship with Aiden cannot be salvaged, and some of the decisions Vivian makes in the way she reacts to Aiden’s rejection of her are, for lack of a better way to describe it, quite destructive and made her a bit less of a likeable character than the way she is presented in the film. By contrast, the end of the book reveals a great deal about the nobility and insight of the character of Gabriel that I feel is only hinted at throughout the rest of the tale. Vivian ends up with Gabriel which really ends up being a good thing because of the leader he turns out to be…I just wish the revelation of his character would have been a little longer in building up. I also found the whole idea of Vivian being encouraged to stay with her own kind to be quite interesting, especially in this politically correct world when such a sentiment could be viewed as racist. Let me be quick to point out that I certainly didn’t see it that way and really enjoyed Gabriel’s thoughts about humans, but I could certainly see a zealous person making that argument.

BIG SPOILER ENDING

And so does what has turned out to be one of my longest winded and perhaps most rambling book reviews. If I haven’t spoiled it all for you I would certainly suggest reading it. Blood and Chocolate is a very good book that manages to work in the whole monster genre vein without being silly or far-fetched in any way. At its heart it is a story about the many and varied levels of relationship and the pains of young love, rejection and ultimate acceptance of one’s self. This was a great R.I.P. II selection and I’m so glad to have finally read Annette Curtis Klause’s most well known work to date.