Book Review: Romeo and Juliet and Vampires By Claudia Gabel

Romeo and Juliet and Vampires By Claudia Gabel

ISBN: 9780007365449;
ISBN10: 0007365446;
mIprint: ;
On Sale: 1/11/2010;
Format: Paperback;
Pages: 0; $24.99;

On Sale: 1/11/2010
Formats: B Format Paperback
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Book Description

"You are deluded, Romeo. Vampires do not have the capability to love. They are heartless."

The Capulets and the Montagues have some deep and essential differences. Blood differences. Of course, the Capulets can try to escape their vampire fate, and the Montagues can try not to kill their undead enemies. But at the end of the day, their blood feud is unstoppable. So it’s really quite a problem when Juliet, a vampire-to-be, and Romeo, the human who should be hunting her, fall desperately in love. What they don’t realize is how deadly their love will turn out to be-or what it will mean for their afterlives...

Now that vampires are folded in to Romeo and Juliet’s already to-die-for drama, teens will adore this twist on the most tragic love story of all time. With human-vampire rivalry, forbidden love, and deadly consequences, this retelling of the play is simply irresistible.

Age 14+



Review

Not another combo classic/monster novel I hear you scream. I’m afraid so, dear reader. Until the popularity of this new trend slows down, there are a multitude of these mash ups that I can see flooding the market. Personally, I have enjoyed most of the recent ones and will probably enjoy the butchering of many more. It’s like listening to cover songs of your favourite artists, like the Butchering the Beatles Heavy Metal Tribute to the fab four, or Kiss My Ass tribute to the masked metal heads. It’s something that you either like or loathe.

What I'm waiting for is someone to take a classic horror and add some romance or the mundane to it, like a Frankenstein and Forrest Gump, or Friday the 13th and Fairies.

This mash up is written more specifically for the YA paranormal romance audience, unlike the Seth type books that are written more for the adult audience not into this genre. Gabel has taken the famous Shakespeare play and morphed it into a novel, with vampires. You won’t find any of the classic dialogue from the original play in-between the covers of this book either.

Gabel has taken the mash up genre and made a really good go of it with Romeo and Juliet and Vampires. The reworking into modern type story with the addition of blood suckers works well and breaks the mould of just adding a few extra paragraphs of monster action to the classic public realm text. I hope that Gabel has another go at this type of mash up, perhaps, Hamlet and Harpies or Othello and Ogres; maybe even A Midsummer Night’s Mutation with some X-Men type characters.
Definitely one of the better recent mash up books and worth a read.