Bitten: Dangerous Girls & The Taste of Night is a two part, teen fiction, horror story by R.L. Stine. Stine is the author of the immensely popular Fear Street and Goosebumps books. He has written quite a few books for teens and adults along with those popular series. Before I started my blog I had read a couple of his adult fiction books and I decided to pick up a few more so that I can review them. As with all my book reviews, I’ll give you the synopsis and then my thoughts. This review will have slight spoilers.

Synopsis

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?

My Thoughts

Before I get into talking about the actual book I want to discuss Stine’s writing style. I love R.L. Stine. He was a major part of my childhood and why I love reading and the supernatural as much as I do. With that being said, he really shines as a children’s and young teen’s writer. He does not write older teen and adult targeted books very well, in my opinion. He’s very set in his writing style so even his adult books will have Goosebumps style language and chapter cliffhangers that don’t amount to anything serious. The only real difference from say the Goosebumps or Fear Street books to his adult books is there will occasionally be sex, language or actual death.  However, I do still enjoy reading his books because I don’t like really intense horror novels and his writing style is nostalgic for me. If you decide to pick up one of his teen or adult books just be prepared for a more innocent, old-school type horror than what is usually popular now. Onto the actual story…

This story was fine. It’s not necessarily one I would care to re-read but it was entertaining enough. As you can tell by the synopsis, it is a vampire story that revolves around two sisters, Destiny and Livvy. Both of these books were just very uncreative. It was a pretty cookie cutter vampire story with nothing new or exciting. The vampire that starts it all is Renz. Renz is a few hundred years old and obsessed with “recreating” his lost love. He becomes fixated on the girls which eventually leads to one of them being turned into a vampire. I feel Renz could have been a really interesting character but he had no depth whatsoever. He was fixated on this one task and really had no other character attributes. The ending to his role in the story was very disappointing as well. I really enjoyed the character of Destiny but not so much Livvy. Livvy just didn’t feel as well written and fleshed out. This book would have been much better with just a little more creativity and character development.

Overall, I do recommend this book but mainly to younger teens. If I remember correctly, there is some very mild language and scenarios that allude to sex but there is nothing explicit. Have you read any of R.L. Stine’s books? What is your opinion? Thanks for reading and have a great day!