Matt and his girlfriend, April, are plunged into a horrifying world of endless night when they encounter the vampires of Sandy Hollow. April is lured away from Matt when a vampire controls her – hypnotizes her with his strange, intoxicating kisses. Now Matt must save April, before she gets her final goodnight kiss.

If there is a book that makes you want to bang your head against the wall, it would be this one. Typically I hold these books to the standard of rating that I would expect from my younger self. But I would like to believe, that the vampire fan I was, I would not have been impressed by Jessica and Gabri’s constant whining about needing “the nectar.”

It’s one thing if only Gabri said it, as Jessica speculated he was at least a century old. But even after teasing him for using the term, Jessica obsessively uses it throughout the book. How does that make sense? Not only that, why wouldn’t there be another term for it? It can’t possibly be a simple case in which the author didn’t want to use the word blood. Because he does mention blood, but when it comes to the vampires, it’s always referred to as “the nectar.”

As for the story itself, it was okay-ish. I liked the idea of two vampires trying to compete with one another. But once again, Jessica’s words and behaviors make no sense. She intentionally stops Gabri from feeding from April and then blames him of cheating when he interferes in her prospect another night. From there on, Jessica’s main goal is to get revenge by beating Gabri.

I suppose this book just lacks any real finesse. Which is odd, as R.L. Stine typically does a really decent job when there is a paranormal element to the story. Perhaps this was just too cheesy in light of all of the young adult vampire-inspired books I have read over the year. Or perhaps it’s truly not one of the better super chillers from this series. Either way, I’m not a fan of this book and while I think I read it as a child, it clearly didn’t leave much of an impression back then, because I didn’t remember any of the story line.

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