Thursday, November 19, 2009

Book Review: GLASS HOUSES by Rachel Caine


“Peer pressure sucks. So do vampires…”
Rachel Caine’s Glass Houses is the first in a series of books called The Morganville Vampires. Morganville is a small college town where Claire Danvers, a surprisingly smart 16 year old, is studying. Her parents shipped her off to college early because of her outstanding intelligence, naively thinking Texas Prairie University was a safe option to go for.
But Morganville holds secrets. Nasty secrets, which stretch further than her frequent problems with Monica Morrell, school hot-girl. Monica has been against Claire ever since she embarrased her in front of hot upperclass men. This is no normal bullying. Oh no. She’s basically trying to kill Claire.
Claire, desperate for escape from the madness of Monica and her Monickettes, finds a place called The Glass House, owned by the eldest house mate, Michael Glass. After much persuasion, Claire finally gets at least a few night’s stay at the house along with Michael, Eve and Shane.
But then Eve tells her about the vampires.
You see, Morganville may appear small and innocent, but the town isn’t really run by humans. Vampires are the rulers. As the story unfolds, Claire is thrown into trauma as she meets many mysterious beings, discovers Michael has his own secrets and starts to feel someone tugging on her heartstrings. But it was never going to be easy to solve. Claire must resolve the problems that are caused by the rivalry between vampire and human before anyone gets killed. Which won’t be easy when vampires lurk around nearly every corner.
The first chapter, for me, was slightly slow. I think at the beginning the background info dragged on a little, but after several chapters, I found myself gripped. The cliffhangers at the end of chapters are those that you can’t afford to wait later for. I also found that the characters were very individual and very very three-dimensional. Like Eve with her goth attitude and little sayings, Shane with his tough guy acting-before-thinking attitude and Michael with his worrying about Claire sharing the house with three people at least two years older than her. The plot is unique and Morganville really is unlike any other supernatural town. The subplots are also very intriguing and I got several “Oh yeah!” moments.
In my opinion, the book is just a bit too predictable. I don’t mean you know what’s going to happen next, but I noticed that I could predict quite accurately when another subplot would slither in mainly because they are so frequent. This may not be a bad thing, but it just made me a bit bored at times.
But overall, I absolutely love this novel. In fact, the sequels are even better.
5/5 stars.

-Becky

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