Violence in media: What is your tolerance level?

I had an interesting review on my book awhile back and it sort of made me laugh. Someone, I’m guessing an older woman, took offense to what happened to poor ole Megan in my book.

Warning: Spoilers Below

Now, if you have read the book, you know that nothing happened to the old woman. She was given some very happy memories to replace the memory of Daniel (who happened to be her beloved cat at the time) and that was it.  Now, I guess some people may consider memory replacement from a vampire a bad thing, but what really struck me was the level of violence that occurs before that event.

For example, prior to that happening in the book, Alex engages in a very long battle with a Newborn (a young vampire). Then, she and Billy are called out to a crime in progress, only to find an entire family has been slaughtered by the father.

Call me crazy, but that seems like a far worse fate than having a few memories of a cat replaced by pleasant memories of a former boyfriend, or a week in the islands, or whatever Bren decided to replace the memory with.

This is why it’s very hard for me to take comments too seriously. I understand that different people will be offended by different things, but it struck as me as odd for some reason. But, I try not to put violence in for the sake of adding violence. Or sex for the sake of sex. My goal in writing is to try and move the story along, not to offend people or try to shock anyone.

However, we see that happen a lot in TV or movies. As far as I’m concerned, if it doesn’t have a point in plot or character development, there isn’t a reason to include it.

What do you think? Do you have certain things you just can’t abide by in novels? What is the level of crime you’re willing to tolerate in a novel or TV show?