The Vampire's Kiss

Nightmare Hall #22

by Diane Hoh

A Salem University co-ed mourns the loss of her deceased boyfriend Lucas, and becomes alarmed when she realizes that one of the new young men in her life is really Lucas returning as a vampire to lure her to the other side.

Genres: Horror, Young Adult, Vampires, Paranormal

145 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

Diane Hoh is the author of fifty-seven novels for young adults. She grew up in Warren, Pennsylvania but currently resides in Austin, Texas. Reading and writing are her favorite things, alongside gardening and grandchildren.

Reviews

[Nattie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Please do not confuse the awful Nightmare Hall books ghost written by Nola Thacker with the near genius Nightmare Hall books written by Diane Hoh. Nola Thacker wrote Roommates #2, and it was good, but it was so poorly written. The Last Date #11, also Thacker, was written in that same horrid I-know-how-today's-teens-talk, lingo. Same case with The Vampire's Kiss.

Thacker and Hoh have such different styles that you know something is off even if you haven't taken the time to read the copyright page and realize that Diane Hoh did not actually write some of the Nightmare hall books. Diane Hoh knows how to write a thriller, she also focuses most of her books on Lester, an on-campus dorm, and her books usually have a psycho, a main character, and a bunch of friends hanging around, and the story just flows without trying to hard.

Thacker doesn't seem to know how to write a taut thriller. Her books are usually focused on the Quad of dorms. Her books usually feel distant from Salem University, even when they are on the campus. Thacker's characters don't talk like Hoh's; they're very cheesy indeed.

[Paula Brandon · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you look at the copyright page, this was actually written by Nola Thacker! A little internet research will tell you that Nola Thacker also wrote under the pseudonym D.E. Athkins. I never liked her books much either!

"The Vampire's Kiss" is stupid. Even the fact it's the shortest book in the series doesn't help. Plus, other than the "Vampire Twins" books, I'm really not a fan of YA vampire books from the 90s.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The vampires kiss by Diane Hoh is actually quite an awesome book. I liked Janie, she had a backbone. There's the usual romance for these books and the ending was different but good.

[Nader Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

vampire, wolf, bat and rat!
I liked the narrative style and the characters. I could interact with them and they were not boring to me. Also, the events of the story were interesting with the university atmosphere as well.
What the story lacks is the depth of the events. I wish it were more profound, and the final plot was also not the best and was rushed a little bit.
*****************************************************************************
#VERDICT : (7.2/10)

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is apparently considered one of the weakest books in the series, but I enjoyed re-reading it - maybe due to my childhood love of it?

[Courtney Gruenholz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've heard some people say that this is not a very good Nightmare Hall book. Mostly because it is too short, a boring read and not really written...by Diane Hoh.

That last one is true because my copy attributes the writer as Nola Thacker aka D.E. Athkins but I'm not surprised for most of these series get to be so popular that one author clearly can't keep up with the demand.

Compared to the length of other Nightmare Hall books, it may be shorter but it is the normal length of any other Scholastic/Point Horror novel so I don't think it has any bearing on the story itself.

Is it boring? Not really. Why did it take me three days to read then? I have a child, a doggie and a husband who need my attention as well as working on getting my own writing done in the little spare time I have.

I like the story just fine even if it took awhile to get to the real meat of the action but I've read a few books that meander and still are quite good.

Janie Curtis works at a popular coffee house on the edge of the Salem University campus and it helps her keep her mind from wandering...and lingering on the horrible murder of her boyfriend Lucas.

None of her co-workers know about it... only her roommate and childhood friend Susanne Delacorte knows the painful secret Janie hides. How she found the young man she loved at the place they would meet in secret, dead on the ground lifeless and covered in blood about his throat.

Susanne and Janie's fellow waitress, Crystal Avon, want Janie to get out more and try to move past work and studying and work and studying...nothing more. A party after a basketball game, Susanne introduces Janie to a friend of her boyfriend, Max, named David who goes by Stretch to get her to move on.

A mysterious stranger keeps coming into the coffee house, sitting in the back, watching Janie until he introduces himself as Jon. A classmate of Susanne's, a drop-dead gorgeous hunk on a motorcycle named Bram, keeps grabbing Janie's attention. Three boys, her friends trying to play with her love life...if only that was the least of Janie's worries.

A bat swoops down at her from the sky, a large wolf too big to be a dog follows Janie on her dates and then the attacks start happening. Only at night, brutal and vicious, eerily similar to what happened...to Lucas.

Janie begins to put the pieces together and the horrifying realization that there is a vampire on campus, the same one that could be possible for the death of her boyfriend, and is now coming for her...

You have some good suspects for who the "vampire" is and even though I put it in air quotes it's sort of justified. I kind of believed this might just be some sort of gaslighting going on to make a clearly emotionally scarred Janie go completely off the rails because that fits the more realistic scenario.

I haven't read many Nightmare Halls that involve actual paranormal themes and was a little surprised to fid one that did. It's not that much of a spoiler...vampire is part of the title.

The climatic reveal is almost what you expect in a YA book about vampires in its mid-1990s glory and it is bitterly sweet, maudlin and I love it. It might not be your cup of coffee yet I'll still raise my mug to whatever opinion you may have and recommend The Vampire's Kiss with three stars out of five.

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the previous one, back to third person (like the last book wasn't first person for the first time), and Nightmare hall was barely mentioned.

* Janie is studying at Salem university, and working at the cafe Mort par chocolate.
* Her last boyfriend Lucas died in strange circumstances, and she's not sure she ever wants to fall in love again.
* She then meets a boy called Stretch (actually David, but a basketball player), Bram (rides a Harley), and Jon who after dark sits in a dark booth in the coffee shop wearing sunglasses.
* Janie goes on a date with Strecth but thinks she'e being attacked by a wolf. She sees the same wolf again outside her dorm building, and then a guard is killed by a 'wild dog'.
* People don't believe Janie when she says she saw this wolf, and she argues with her roommate and best friend Suzanne.
* She also receives some notes which seem to be from Lucas, and she wonders if Lucas became a vampire after he died, because nobody else knew the things that he wrote to her.
* She stays at her friend Crystal's flat, but Crystal never comes home. Then the next day she finds Crystal covered in blood and being attacked by a dark figure.
* Janie then decides that it's up to her to kill the vampire 🙄 and believe me, Buffy she is not.
* She goes out walking alone after dark, hoping to meet the vampire, and instead finds Stretch and Bram following her, trying to keep her safe.
* They end up fighting and both are knocked out (fantastic job of keeping her safe boys).
* Then Jon turns up, he's the vampire, and he's really Lucas (how the **** did she not recognise him when she keeps claiming that he's the love of her life?????)
* So, she tries to kill him after explaining that she doesn't want to be a vampire, but misses his heart. Luckily, he decides he doesn't want to live without her, and finishes the job himself.

I wasn't overly impressed with this one. Janie accepted drinks from men she didn't know which is not a good idea, she dated multiple men at the same time, didn't recognise the love of her life because he was wearing sunglasses, and decided to take on a bloody vampire all on her own, armed with just a stick 🙄 like seriously 🙄

[Lizzie the Book Hoarder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hoping to move on in her life Janie goes to college and drowns herself in work to forget her dead boyfriend. However when strange incidents start to occur and someone is murdered the memories come flooding back. When the evidence points to a vampire Janie starts to wonder what is going on. Is her best friend trying to set her up, could there actually be a vampire (maybe the strange guy at work or the hot guy she met at a party) or could it be her boyfriend is back from the dead? Will Janie be able to figure out what is going on before she is the next victim?

[Alixendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

"interesting" is all I can really say on this book, since it's not that bad but it wasn't a different style of a vampire story either...In the beginning I was really confused on who Lucas was, but I finally figured it out after a couple pages.

[Cupof Tea · Rating 3 out of 5]

"confusing" was my best one word description of this book in junior high.