Kissing Coffins Review

Kissing Coffins By Ellen Schreiber (Book 2 In The Vampire Kisses Series)

3 nights ago Raven found out that her boyfriend Alexander really was a vampire and she used her night figuring out how to comfront him, but when she came over to him the next night he was gone. Now 2 nights have passed by and Raven hasn´t slept at all. Her and her BFF Becky is watching a movie about Dracula 2 night after, but Raven has to stop the movie because it reminds her to much of her and Alexander. She hasn´t told Becky yet about Alexander leaving, so when Becky ask her and Alexander out on a double date with her and Matt, her new boyfriend, Raven comes out with a lie that he is studying for exams. When becky leaves she tells Raven, because of the movie that if her great love was a vampire a disappeared she would go look for him. And of course Becky is right so Raven goes to the mansion and goes inside trought the window with a brick in the basement. The house is abandon, but in Alexanders room she finds a letter saying: Alexander, HE IS ON HIS WAY!, but the rest is torn off and she also finds out something that looks like his passport. When she gets home she locks herself in her room and remembers that Ruby a employ at Armstrong Travel, who is Raven friend, was suppose to have a date, with the butler Jameson from the mansion. So the next day before school she runs over there, only Ruby tells her that Jameson stood her up and she has never been that before. Suddenly a flower man comes inside with flower to Ruby who turns out to be from Jameson. Raven races outside to stop the flowerman but is to late, but she finds the order right outside the store with a number on it. She borrows the stores phone and it is a number to The Coffin Club. After school she tell her parents that she wants to go see her Aunt
Libby, when spring break starts that wednesday, and her parents tell her they will call her aunt. Her reasons for wanting to go there is because when she saw the Coffin Clubs number it was the same area code as her aunt.

Later she meets up with Becky to ask her to go with her to her aunt the next day, but Becky is going to watch Matt´s football game tommorow, so she cant. She also bribes her brother with a game, so she can get a fake id so her brother takes her to his school where a 11 year old boy, makes one for her. The next day she takes the bus to her aunt and is later in Hipsterville. Her aunt, who is still hippie like her parents were ones, picks her up and tells her she is doing a play of Dracula tonight, but Raven isn´t planning on staying. When the play start Raven sneaks out of the former school were the play is held and goes too the Coffin Club, were there are a lot of people like her dressed as goth´s and she is actually being checked out. She ask the bartender and the dj is anyone has seen Jameson here the other night, but there are so many bald men with capes like Jameson. The bartender ask another member of the crew and she tells that yes she saw the man who asked to make a phone call and that there was another person with him. But she doesn´t know anything else. The bartender Romeo then says he know who she is looking for and takes her upstairs in the club at a private room, but the person up there isn´t Alexander or Jameson, it is a boy the same age as Alexander who´s name is Jagger and goth, but because of the things he tells her and the way he act, Raven get the feeling that he knows something. So she begins to take up her mirror to see if he is a vampire, but he is already gone when she takes up the mirror. She goes back to the school and the show has just ended and her aunt ask if she saw the play because she didn´t saw her on the front row, so Raven comes up with a story that she had to go to another seat. Then her aunt introduce her to a man named Marshall, who plays the Dracula and he tells Raven that he has visited the Coffin Club and that he saw and old man asking for old abandon masions and told him to go to Historical Society. But while he talk Raven can see a figure outside, so she hurries out there when Marshall is gone, only the person is already gone, but left is something he dropped. An earring, who Raven saw on Jagger.

They return to her aunt´s apartment but Raven is really spooked out so she keeps turning on the lights, while her aunt shut it off. She also call her little brother who tells her some man called, but that he doesn´t know who it was, because he hung when Billy said Raven weren´t home. The next day she convince her aunt to go to Historical Society and says to her aunt and the lady there that she is doing a history paper. The women there also metions that a man had just been there the other day looking for abandon masions like her and when Raven is almost done she finds a bookmark on another abandon masion named Coswell Manor House, that seems like the perfect place for Jameson to choose and the women says he said that was the perfect place, so Raven also writes down that adress. At night when her aunt goes to do another performance, Raven goes too the old Coswell House, but nobody open. But Raven doesn´t give up that easily so she climbs a tree to get up to the attic window where she Knows Alexander would choose to have a room. The window to the attic room is covered by curtains, but there is a little hole and Raven sees the picture Alexander has painted of her, but she has to go because the neighboors is starting to get mad, because Raven made a lot of noise before. When she get to where her aunt is playing tonight Jagger shows up and tells her he has information about Alexander, so she goes with him to the basement of the Coffin Club were he has a little place and he tells her he knows Alexander from Romania, but he doesn´t tell her anything more. he also tries to seduce her and she runs out of there and Jagger tells her, that she better hope she finds Alexander before him. She later tells her aunt that she has to go back the next day, because she knows she can´t keep looking for Alexander with Jagger on her back.

Back home the next day, she hurries to the mansion and when she sees Alexanders room there is a backpack. She runs outside to the gazebo were she thinks Alexander is, but it is Jagger and soon she faints. She wakes up at Dullsville´s cemetery and Jagger is there and he takes her to a coffin where on top off it is a goblet and candelabra, and he tells her it is a A covenant ceremony. She tries to get away by taken a showel on the ground right beside her, but he stops her and she sees he has no reflection. He then tries to get her to drink from the goblet and become his mate for eternity, but suddenly Alexander shows up and tells Raven to get out of there and tells Jagger he shouldn´t have brought Raven into it. And Raven quickly finds out that Alexander was hidding from Jagger his enemy. But suddenly Jagger´s fangs is in her neck and she wakes up to finding Alexander, beside her telling her to go and she sees Jagger rising from the ground a little away from her and she runs like hell until she is inside the mansion. Ones up in Alexander´s room someone is at his door she first think it is Jagger and tries to flee to the door, but the person catches her and it turn out to be Alexander and they kiss with passion and they talk and as it turns out Alexander was born vampire, but that he really wants to be human. Raven wakes up at night in Alexander tv room and Alexander says he will follow er home, but first he explains that he left to protect her from Jagger who his parents warned him, was looking for him so he got to another town to make a plan, but then Raven showed up. As they walk to raven´s house he explains that he was suppose to take Jagger´s twin sister, Luna for all of eternity because his parents made the promise the year Alexander was born. Back then Alexander and Jagger´s family was close, but it turned out Luna was human so for her to become a part of the vampire world they wanted Alexander to change her and become her mate. But he didn´t do it because he had traveled his whole life and never knew Luna, so when the ceremony came he kiss her goodbye instead of all eternity. Jagger´s family became mad and Alexander´s family arrange for him to live at the masion in Dullsville. Raven is really tired and fall with her head on the bed, but first she sees a boy outside in the shadows who she is sure is Alexander.

The next day she sees Becky in the park, but she also sees Trevor who beggins buggin her. At night she goes to Alexander´s place and she tells Jameson he should call Ruby. Alexander takes her to and old abandon barn where he shows her a white cat with a lot of white kittens and one black kitten, who he explain he found last night and he ask if Raven wants the black one, to remember him at day when he is sleeping and she decide to call it Nightmare. When she gets home she gets permission to keep her cat and goes to the garage to fnd a box for Nightmare and suddenly Jagger is there telling her that he has other things in his mind than Alexander and saying they could be together. He also tells her she can´t tell Alexander he was here beause then she and the whole town will be in danger and he will tell about Alexander. Then Billy comes out to the garage and she is saved from Jagger. The next day Dracula is showing in the drive-in movie theater, that is actually build on sacred grounds, and if you dress up today you only has to play half the price, so Raven, Alexander, Becky and Matt plans to do a double date, so after school her and Becky uses the day finding costumes and when Raven can´t find her fangs she, Becky and Billy goes to Billy´s friends house and pay for a new pair of fangs. That night Raven is on her way to the mansion and is almost there when she can hear someone in the bushes, she throws something and the person turns out to be Trevor who wanted to scare her and she tells him she doesn´t have time because she is going to the drive in. After she is inside the gate she hears Trevor talking to Jagger, who ask about Raven and Trevor tells him Raven is going to the drive-in and Trevor tells Jagger he can show him where it is. When Raven is inside the mansion getting ready with Alexander, she tells Alexander the truth and they then come up with a plan, but by accident she expose him to the garlic she has in her purse and Alexander has a hard time breating, so Raven rush down to Jameson who gives her a needle and tells her to give him the shot.

At the movies 3/4 into the movie, the movie stops and Becky and Matt goes for drinks. Raven has just gotten into the car again and Alexander guarding out when Jagger is suddenly at the paasengerseat he locks the doors, but Raven manage to open a door for Alexander, but Jagger pulls her out of there toward the exit, but Alexander catches up. Raven bites Jagger´s arm, the movie starts again and Raven and Alexander goes to beside the movie screen, were they on the same time as the movie play the scene where the vampire lead bites the female lead, and since Alexander and Raven is dressed liked them it look completly similar. So Jagger really thinks that Alexander bites Raven but he really doesn´t, so Jagger storms of. The next day a lot of people at school are talking about Raven and Alexander´s performance and a lot of people ask Becky and her were they got the costumes. That night Alexander takes her to the golf track and they have a date with music, dancing and sprinklers. That saturday it is time for Dullsville's Spring Carnival. They meet Ruby who is with Jameson. They ride the rides and Alexander wins a prize for her. But when she bumb into Trevor and he walks on calling for a girl named Luna, Alexander and Raven stops dead and Alexander says that it is Luna. Raven goes to Trevor and ask him how he knows Luna and he says that Jagger introduced them and told him to take her with him today. Raven tries to tell him that Jagger is dangerous, but he just goes to Luna and dissapears into the fun house. Alexander and Raven cuts the line and hirrues after them and suddenly they are face to face with Luna, who is now a vampire because the room they are in are covered with mirrors. She tells them that a fling changed her and that Jagger got her out of Romania and that Jagger found someone who would be perfect to mate, Trevor. The lights goes out and when it goes back on she is gone.

I really like the girl on this cover. This book really becomes to goth for me, with all of the goth things or pretend goth things. In this one there is again the problem with not knowing the time and i also thinks like in the first that the the episode change is too fast and too many that you just don´t know what happens.
I dont really get a climax, it is like yes Jagger and Alexander is confronted in the cemetery, where Jagger is trying to make Raven his for eternity and then it all falls and nothing happens and you dont even know if Jagger bit her or not, because it doesn´t really say and you have no idea what it felt like or if it hurt after. Then you think as Alexander comes back to the mansion that some big battle has happened between him and Jagger. But then Alex just says Jagger is gone because there is nothing for him here, and nothing more. And you just think: Dude he came here to destroy you and take Raven as mate, what is there not here for him? Why should he leave when everything is right here? The plot is just going nowhere at all. And why does she have to keep bringing up the goth thing, when you just want to pretend she is not, because it is dumb. Raven remains the same selfish, whiny, immature wannabe as she was before, with her contempt for all non-"freaks" and her shallow infatuation with vampirism. Not good.


Grade: 2-4