I first read Hocking’s work when my junior suggested her Trylle trilogy. Well, my junior fits into the age category Hocking targeted, while I consider myself to be too old for paranormal romances, or better put, immature, shallow paranormal romances. I enjoyed the Trylle trilogy though, despite the flaws that I would like to elaborate later in another post.I was looking for a bit of light reading when I stumbled upon ‘My Blood Approves’ in my iBooks. I downloaded it when I was looking for the Trylle series a year ago.

One thing about Hocking is, she has the power to engage you into her book, no matter how stupid the story is. Yeah, My Blood Approves got me hooked for two nights, because two nights were all it took for me to finish reading it. The language was simple, too simple for someone like me who endeavours on Jude Devereaux’s, Kazuo Ishiguro’s, Andrea Lewy’s elaborate, wise choice of words. As her Trylle trilogy, she repeatedly, annoyingly used the word ‘foxy ‘ way too many times that I have to look up on the meaning few times to make sure that I wasn’t missing the real meaning of it. Okay, I get it, vampires are just too hot that you can’t find any other word, but ‘foxy’ from a bulk of 200 000 words in English.

So, this book is about Alice Bonham, a plain looking 17-year-old-girl, who  apparently has super-tasty, deliciously-scented blood that gets all the vampires turned on. So, that is how she gets involved with a family of hot vampires consisting of, the foxy Ezra, the foxy Mae, the foxy Jack and the-ever- so- foxy Peter. Hocking came up with a concept that no other vampire stories (that I have read) have offered. Something called ‘bond’.  Since Alice’s blood is surreptitiously tasty, every vampire wants to get a bite of it, more of a suck in this context. Peter, however, is physically bonded with Alice, which means, Alice, a mortal, is supposed to be Peter’s wife but oh no, Jack’s in love with Alice.  Alice, on the other hand, gets all wet and physically vulnerable when she even smells the tangy fragrant of Peter (tangy is another word that was used at least a hundred  times in this book) but she feels comfortable in Jack’s arms, she loves Jack’s heartily laugh and she probably is in love with Jack. Yes, she is very confused. She gets stuck in this love-sex-bloodlust triangle and that’s the conflict in this story.

The thing I like about this book is nothing. I don’t like the language. I don’t like the superficiality of the characters; I especially don’t like the personality of the protagonist, Alice. It somehow strengthened the judgments I have on Hocking. Both her Trylle series and now, My Blood Approves, share the same type of protagonist, a girl who, undoubtedly, has very low self-esteem and somehow is being wooed after by, at least two paranormal guys. In both stories, the main girl could not choose between the guys and this conflict is prolonged into a series of books. So, in real life, I assume, no offense, I assume Hocking probably, is not very confident about herself and she tries to channel out her needs by creating girl characters that are sought after by many guys.

Overall, I think this book deserves a 2.5/5. As I said, Hocking is good at making the readers buy the next book in the series, so, I am actually on the second book, Fate. I am curious to know what happens to the special physical bond Peter has with Alice and whether Alice chooses Jack over Peter. So, I guess the plot is not bad, after all. 

Five words about this book: Foxy, supernatural, shallow, immature, sensual.

Post-script:

I imagine Jack to be like this, or probably like Enrique Iglesias, except his hair was supposed to be sandy brown.