Netflix’s First Kill is a YA romance worth sinking your teeth into

polygon.com:

Years of watching television aimed at young adults has taught me that young love is supposed to be painfully passionate and full of longing, heartache, and secret make-out sessions. It’s also much better when it’s forbidden, and when there are vampires involved, it’s just all the more intense (and hot). First Kill, Netflix’s new supernatural YA drama about two teenage girls who fall in love despite their status as mortal enemies, more than lives up to these high expectations. Just don’t expect the story to really make sense.

Based on a short story by V.E. Schwab, First Kill follows Juliette Fairmont (Sarah Catherine Hook), a legacy vampire living in plain sight with her vampire family in Savannah, Georgia. (In First Kill, being a legacy vamp means you’re born, not made, though how exactly this happens is unclear.) At 16, the blood pills she’s lived off of her entire life are losing their efficacy, and it’s time for her to make her first kill. But Juliette is a rare breed, a legacy vamp with a conscience who is desperate to avoid killing at all costs. Enter Calliope Burns (Imani Lewis), the new girl in school who Juliette can’t stop thinking about. But when she finally goes to shoot her shot, Juliette is met with a stake straight to the heart. Calliope also isn’t just a regular teenage girl; she’s a monster hunter raised by a family of monster hunters. How’s that for forbidden love?

All the popular vampire shows or movies in the past two decades feature some kind of Romeo and Juliet storyline — The Vampire Diaries’ Stefan and Elena or Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Angel and Buffy — and First Kill doesn’t shy away from these pop culture comparisons. In fact, the opening credits features an incredibly catchy song that actually