Title: Dead Girls’ Dance
Author: Rachel Caine
Series: The Morganville Vampires, #2
Genres: Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Young Adult
Publisher: NAL (Imprint of Penguin)
Date Published: August 3rd, 2007
Edition: eBook
Rating:
Claire Danvers has her share of challenges—like being a genius in a school that favors beauty over brains, dealing with the homicidal girls in her dorm, and above all, finding out that her college town is overrun with vampires. On the up side, she has a great roommate (who tends to disappear at sunup) and a new boyfriend named Shane, whose vampire-hunting dad has called in backup: cycle punks who like the idea of killing just about anything.
Now a fraternity is throwing its annual Dead Girls’ Dance and—surprise!—Claire and her equally outcast best friend, Eve, have been invited. When they find out why, all hell is going to break loose. Because this time both the living and the dead are coming out—and everybody’s hungry for blood.
My Review:
Dead Girls’ Dance picks up right after Glass Houses, quite literally. With the cliffhanger Glass Houses leaves us with, it’s only right that we get to see what happens! But thankfully Dead Girls’ Dance doesn’t leave us hanging quite as much (a little, but not as dramatically lol).
I enjoyed the second book in this series almost as much as the first one, only because the first one had some discovering what this world was all about and that’s always half the fun with a first-in-series. But Rachel Caine doesn’t disappoint and keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entirety of the book. I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally be sucked into a young adult series again. So many of them seem like carbon copies that I was getting a bit bored with the genre (with the exception of new releases from my already-favorite series’), but this one renews my faith in young adult books a bit (even if it is an older-ish series).
Without giving too much away this book follows the aftermath of some choices made by the gang in the first book and leads them into even murkier waters before it’s through. It’s a fun ride with lots of twists and turns.
The only thing I don’t entirely like is the romance between Shane and Claire. Not necessarily because she’s sixteen, I mean he’s only eighteen so it doesn’t seem that bad. But mostly because I don’t really feel any chemistry between them so it feels like a forced romance (by the author) to me. To me, the books would be just as fun even without their little “romantic” side story, but that’s just me.
Aside from that, I’m finding the world pretty interesting — a town run by vampires practically set apart from the rest of the world lends to some unexpected rules and standards. The characters are pretty good. I don’t love Claire, the main character, but she’s gotten better since the beginning of the first book. I do really like Michael and Eve the most, and Shane seems to be a good guy. Mostly I find the vampires in this world fascinating with all their politics.
So this is definitely a series I’ll be continuing. From the Goodreads ratings, it looks like they only get better, so I’m definitely on board with that. I’d recommend this to anyone who loves the paranormal. It’s considered young adult, but has more of an adult urban fantasy feel to it to me, not quite adult, but the same kind of vibe. Fun series overall though.
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