The First Bite is the Deepest
by Elisa Catrina
Guest Post by Stephanie Sparr
As an avid reader of all things vampire, werewolf, and witch, I have read a lot of different takes on the supernatural world. The First Bite Is The Deepest follows awkward high school senior Stella into her first relationship, which just so happens to be with a vampire. Sebastian is just the type that every teenage girl could be interested in; you have to introduce yourself to him or he’ll never notice your existence. He’s the mystery we all want to chase.
Stella’s three friends, Naida, Jenny, and Austin, are all over-protective and have their own teenage dramas to figure out. When Stella and Sebastian’s relationship begins to move faster and more intense than they feel necessary, they step in. As the cause of more personal injury to Stella than they thought, these three keep up with their theories about Sebastian and just so happen to be right.
After coming to the conclusion that Sebastian is a vampire, this group of friends’ world gets shaken and they have a lot more than just a high school drama to play out. Love, loss, and loyalty sets this book up to quite the interesting ending.
The premise of this book is set up to be similar to one of ‘Samantha Hayes: Demon Slayer’; a fictional book Catrina created for this book. The first page of the book (Part 1) is even an ‘excerpt’ from Stella’s favorite novel series. This in itself isn’t a bad idea, I’ve read multiple books that use quotes of other writers work to set up the plot. However, because Samantha Hayes is a fictional character within a fictional book, the first chapter was a bit confusing trying to figure out if Samantha Hayes is the main character or if Stella is. After getting to ‘Part 2’ in the book, it became more clear what Catrina was going for with the Samantha Hayes excerpts and the plot became more clear.
The point of view within the book changes. A lot. Every teenage character that is introduced has a point of view and it makes it very hard to follow. However, I like the relationship between the group of friends; it’s very relatable to that of my own high school relationships and made the confusing view changes a bit easier to decipher. Each person’s personality was very unique and easily recognizable about half-way through the book. With so much changing, there is just too much explanation about everyone else’s opinion, and not enough detail about what happened between Stella and Sebastian. How does their first date go? When and how did their first kiss happen? How long was their relationship?
In all, the idea behind the book isn’t bad, it just needed more detail and explanation of the plot/Stella and Sebastians relationship. The way the book ended, I can sense a potential second book written solely in Stella’s viewpoint, and if that is the case I’d be excited to read it and hopefully get some of my many questions answered.
Synopsis
When Stella Ortiz starts dating mysterious transfer student Sebastian Weber, her friends become determined to break up the fledgling pair. It’s just not a good idea to go out with a guy who misses tons of school and day-drinks something that smells like pennies, right?
Stella and her friends quickly find themselves in way over their heads, struggling against a whole family of vampires. Sometimes, breakups really are a matter of life and death.
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