At this point in the literary game, if you're going to write a young adult vampire novel, you'd better have some new and interesting twist on the genre, or at least do the basics really, really well. Miko Mitsuki squeaks in under the wire with a strangely enjoyable little urban vampire tale, which, while it isn't entirely innovative, manages to play with the tropes enough to come up with a story that's part Black Bird and part Millennium Snow, a combination that works better than you might think.

The heroine of the story is both its strength and its downfall. Hinata Sorazono is a high school student at what appears to be a Catholic girls' school. The teachers are in a flutter because of recent attacks on young women, during which they are drained of most of their blood. Although no one has died yet, there's a real emphasis on that “yet,” and students are warned against walking alone to the point where the admonitions are starting to lose their impact. Partly to blame for this is author Junya Tokinaga's incredibly popular vampire romance series, Until the Ends of the Earth. Much like Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, the books are romanticizing being involved with a vampire, which as you might guess is not a great combination when you combine it with a perpetrator called “the vampire attacker” and teenage girls. As for Hinata, well, she just dismisses the whole thing. Her common sense attitude, and the way she does her research before confronting Junya with his supposed identity, is a major strength in a heroine. She's not caught up in the romantic fervor, but she reads the books so that she knows what's going on. She suspects Junya, but she doesn't really do anything until she's put all of the pieces together. This kind of forethought before plunging into a relationship with a mysterious, hot, older man is rather refreshing in a shoujo romance, and definitely one of Mitsuki's best additions to the genre.

Regretfully, Hinata also falls far too fast even as she's conducting her research. She goes from spurning Junya's physical advances – she tells him outright to stop touching her – to suddenly yearning for the exact opposite. While this is certainly a reality of hormone-fueled attraction (or if you prefer, true love; it can be hard to tell in the romance genre and it's particularly unclear here), with this story there's a slightly uncomfortable feeling that it implies that Hinata liked his unsolicited physical attentions, even as she was proclaiming the opposite. Since his touches are often a bit violent in nature, this is a little unsettling. In the mildest complaint, her emotional turn around is simply too sudden, making it lack believability when she had been so against it from the start.

Possibly this is due to editorial insistence. In her sidebars and afterward, Mitsuki makes allusions to the fact that she and her editor do not always see eye-to-eye, and she flat out says that Honey Blood is only three volumes long (two of main story) because it didn't do well among Sho-Comi's readers. This in no way means that the story will not do well with the rest of us, however – for all of its issues, Honey Blood is hard to put down once you start reading.

Along with Hinata's stronger aspects, this is accomplished by Mitsuki's take on the vampire mythos. She combines the shared life trope most recently seen here in Bisco Hatori's Millennium Snow with the more predatory parts of being involved with a supernatural male, like in Kanoko Sakurakoji's Black Bird. While Honey Blood is in no way as uncomfortable as Black Bird, we can easily see some similarities in the way Junya reacts to Hinata's scent and his need to be in physical contact with her. Mitsuki also uses the idea of the past life in a good way to help flesh out the romance, making this, if not the most innovative vampire story ever, at least not feel stale. While her art is not as fluid as one might like and she does make heavy use of screen tones – at times to her own detriment – Mitsuki's artwork is pleasant to look at, with every character looking distinct and Hinata having larger feet than we typically see in shoujo.

Honey Blood is a one of those series that makes you understand the continued popularity of urban fantasy. Despite some issues, it is a quick, almost compulsive read with a heroine who mostly really thinks about the issues ahead of her and tends not to just jump headlong into danger. Mitsuki combines several different supernatural tropes to get an entertaining story manages not to reveal too much too soon, and just in general makes for a book that is easy to pick up and hard to put down.