Title The Silver Kiss Series --- Author Annette Curtis Klause Cover Art --- Publisher Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group - 1992 First Printing --- Category Young Adult Warnings None Main Characters Zoë Sutcliff, Simon, Christopher Main Elements Vampires

Zoë is wary when, in the dead of night, the beautiful yet frightening Simon comes to her house. Simon seems to understand the pain of loneliness and death and Zoë's brooding thoughts of her dying mother.

Simon is one of the undead, a vampire, seeking revenge for the gruesome death of his mother three hundred years before. Does Simon dare ask Zoë to help free him from this lifeless chase and its insufferable loneliness?

A story about death and those left behind, afraid to speak the word but desperately looking for someone to talk to. Zoë find such a person in Simon, a vampire well familiar with death, particularly that of his own mother's. Simon was interested, different than many young adult fiction vampires. He hasn't sworn off blood, he doesn't whine and complain about his fate. He moves through the human world unnoticed by the mortals around him, and in return, he is little more than an observer of their pointless lives. He is a hunter, and certain not human. No, actually that last piece of humanity he has left, deeply hidden beneath the beast, awakened at the sightly of the lonely girl in the park one night. Someone who had a vague idea of this own loss, and perhaps together they could comt to terms with death, complete unfinished business, and find a way to move on.

I like the little details, Simon's speech patterns, how the chapters alternate between Zoë's amd Simon's point of views, allowing us to see the same event through two very different pairs of eyes. The villain in this book is not tall dark stranger, but rather a child in a pair of OshKosh overalls with a teddy bear.

And like many books written for young adults, it is often more insightful that those written for us "grown-ups".

Do I recommend this book? Absolutely. Do I agree with the School Library Journal that it was the Best Book of the Year? I don't know, depends on what the competition was, but the fact that a book where two of the main characters suck the blood of the living by night managed to earn such an honour from a school association, must definitely mean there's something worthwhile in this book.