Blood and Chocolate takes place in Riverview, a suburban Maryland town. Among the sites of the novel's events are a high school campus, a strip shopping mall, a college's outdoor arena, and residential streets. There is also a neighborhood bar and grill, Tooley's, where Vivian's mother Esme works as a waitress. Tooley's is frequented by pack members as well as by bikers, which leads to some edgy standoffs between the two groups. No issues from the larger city, presumably Washington, D.C., intrude on the story, however.

Instead, the human-made places stand in contrast to the natural world, where the wolf-like impulses of Vivian and her kind can emerge. Even Riverside has many wild places: patches of woods and of high grasses, and a river's edge path along which the young loups-garous run and play on evening outings. The pack's preferred home would be far away from cities...