Bitten Review

Bitten by R. L. Stine

You'll love them—to death.

Twin sisters Destiny and Livvy Weller return home from summer vacation with a dark secret . . . and an inhuman desire to drink blood. What have they become? Can they ever turn back? As their deadly secret becomes harder to keep, more questions arise and loyalties are tested. And as one sister descends into darkness, the other must find a way to save her—and herself. Who will live to see the glow of the next full moon? Which sister will survive?

In Dangerous Girls and Dangerous Girls #2: The Taste of Night, published together in Bitten, bestselling author R.L. Stine explores the dark creatures of the night.

3 out of 5 stars 

Bitten is a bind up of Dangerous Girls and Dangerous Girls 2: The Taste of Night, originally published in 2003 and 2004 (according to Wikipedia.)

I was too old for R. L. Stine when these books were originally published, and I probably would not have bought this book except for the fact that it was $4. I can't resist cheap books, even if they might not be something that I'd buy otherwise. I also sometimes like reading books that remind me of my younger reading years, though I always preferred Christopher Pike to R. L. Stine.

Technically, they are two different books, so I am going to do them separately and give them one rating based on the two. There will be spoilers for Dangerous Girls in the review for The Taste of Night.

Dangerous Girls

Destiny and her twin sister Livvy spent the summer at camp and, on the last day, Destiny is bitten by a vampire. He didn't feed her his blood, though, so she is only a half vampire. At home, she finds out that Livvy is also in the same predicament. As Destiny is trying to find a way to reverse what happened, the vampire obsessed with her is waiting for the next full moon to turn her into a vampire. Livvy also becomes distant and Destiny is afraid of the path her sister is taking.

Dangerous Girls is probably for younger readers, though it is less juvenile than R. L. Stine's Fear Street books. The writing was a good bit better than the Fear Street books, too, but still not the best. It's simple and easy to read, without a lot of excess description. It actually reminds me a lot of a horror movie, with more focus on the actions of the main character and the terror rather than getting to know the character as a person. Most of the extra characters are disposable and you never really know more about them than their names.

The story itself was not very complicated, mostly focusing on Destiny, her thirst for blood and her fear of becoming a vampire. Refreshingly, the vampire isn't the love interest.There is also a more traditional vampire mythology. Though they can go out in the day, the sun is uncomfortable. They can also turn into bats.



The Taste of Night

Livvy is now a vampire, which we discover at the end of Dangerous Girls, and has been since the girls were at summer camp. It's now almost a year later and Destiny has graduated high school. She knows that Livvy is still out there and she believes that she can bring her home and that her dad will find a cure for vampirism. Livvy wants no part of her old life and, when one of her vampire friends is killed, she blames her sister.

The Taste of Night was a little bit more in depth than Dangerous Girls, but not much. Quite a lot of it was Destiny looking for Livvy and Livvy being angry at Destiny. Still, it was more interesting to read about the vampire point of view, which wasn't absent in the last one but was more prevalent in this one.

The writing was still the same in this book- better than the Fear Street books but still not the best. This book wasn't any worse or better than Dangerous Girls, so it really was, outside of the time jump, a seamless read.

What I did like about this one was Mikey, the little brother. I liked that he was traumatized by the events that happened around him. It was far more believable than if he had been like the younger siblings in most of these kind of books and perfectly okay.


Overall

These two books were okay. It is probably more on a junior high level so I would probably only recommend it for the younger readers that want something mildly scary but are getting too old for Goosebumps or for someone that's a little nostalgic for R. L. Stine and may not have read this one because it was published later than the Fear Street books. I can't really think of anything that was really bad about these books, but they are below a reading level that I can really get into. I was too old for R. L. Stine when these were first published and i still am.