Old Review: Midnight Alley by Rachel Caine

Midnight Alley by Rachel Caine
The Morganville Vampires, book #3


Next Book in Series: Feast of Fools
Mass Market Paperback: 248 Pages
Age Group: Young Adult (13+)
Buy: Amazon
Source: Own
Date Read: April 2010
Overall: 

Claire Danvers's college town may be run by vampires but a truce between the living and the dead made things relatively safe. For a while. Now people are turning up dead, a psycho is stalking her, and an ancient bloodsucker has proposed private mentoring. To what end, Claire will find out. And it's giving night school a whole new meaning.

First Lines: The instant the phone rang at the Glass House, Claire knew with a psychic flash that it had to be her mother.

Okay, first of all, I did the same as I did with The Dead Girls' Dance, and immediately picked up Midnight Alley as soon as I finished. I just finished reading Lord of Misrule and so I can't really remember what happened in what book, mostly. Everything is starting to run together.

I love how she picks up nearly RIGHT after the last book ends. She's done this throughout the series and I love it. Nothing is left out. Nothing to make you wonder what happened in between the ending of one book and the beginning of the next.

And the characters are still growing and being utterly amazing. All the characters in Caine's vampire world, otherwise knows as Morganville, is all real to me. Sometimes to the point where I walk out of my house and wonder what crazy thing is going to happen in Morganville today, or where I nearly write Morganville down as my city, instead of my real city.

Can you imagine the looks I would get for that? ;)

In this installment Claire is paying for the choices she made in the last book and you get to know Amelie a bit more. Which is awesome, but doesn't mean that I don't have my evil stare ready for her at times. And Mrynin, I honestly do not know what to say about him. He's such a nut, but he is quite hilarious at times. He's such a whacko. But I do like him, though I do have my moments where I want to whack him with something and put him in a straitjacket.

We also continue to learn more about Morganville and it's history, along with the vampires history. Which is very fascinating and sends me to Google in search for more history on Morganville, but then I have to remember the fact that the lovely Rachel Caine created it.

Midnight Alley ends with yet another cliff hanger, and also a new visitor in town! Caine really knows how to end with a cliff hanger to keep you reading, which I both admire and find really annoying. But that's only because on one side it's genius, and on the other it becomes a pain in the butt when you can't get to the next installment fast enough.

Overall I really loved this installment. As I did the others and don't think I'll ever not like one of these amazing books. If you haven't read any books in this series yet, you REALLY need to put it on your wish list and 'TBR' list.
Cover: 
The cover is very pretty, but not one of my favorites. I think the first book, so far, is my favorite.
I recommend this to: All vampire lovers. 

Old Review: The Dead Girls' Dance by Rachel Caine

The Dead Girls' Dance by Rachel Caine


Publisher:The Morganville Vampires, book #2
Read my review for Glass Houses. 
Next Book in Series: Midnight Alley
Publisher: NAL Jam
Release Date: April 3, 2007
Mass Market Paperback: 256 Pages
Age Group: Young Adult 
Buy:  Amazon
Add to Goodreads
Source: Own
Challenge: none
Date Read: April 2010
Overall: 5/5

Claire Danvers has her share of challenges--like being a genius in a school that favors beauty over brains, homicidal girls in her dorm, and finding out that her college town is overrun with the living dead. When a local fraternity throws the Dead Girls' Dance, hell really breaks loose. Original.

First Lines:  It didn't happen, Claire told herself. It's just a bad dream, just another bad dream. You'll wake up and it'll be gone like fog.... 

Like I said in my review for Glass House, as soon as I finished the first book I leaped across my room to grab the second installment, The Dead Girls’ Dance, and I immediately started to read it. As soon as my eyes hit the first sentence of the book I was sucked back into Morganville to see everything that was going on. Rachel Caine’s writing makes me feel as though I’m really in the book with the characters. Every feeling that Claire has, I experience.

The only thing I don’t like about it is that Claire jumps into a new person too quick. I mean, I’m glad she’s more confident now and more of a new person, because frankly at first she really bugged me. But still, it’s a bit too fast. I still love her nonetheless though. As I do all the main characters, especially Eve.

Nothing really changed about my loathing of Monica Morrell. Oh how I want to smack her! I also have a very high loathing for Shane’s father now and all of his little back-ups.

I really can’t figure out which installment I like better right now, Glass Houses or The Dead Girls’ Dance. I read through The Dead Girls’ Dance just as fast as I did withGlass Houses, which I’m very happy about.

But just as I did with The Dead Girls’ Dance, I ran to Midnight Alley after finishing. And boy does Rachel Caine know how to leave a cliff hanger. It isn’t really a cliff hanger, just a happy ending to a horrible day, that you just know will be destroyed again the next day. So that drives me as crazy as a cliff hanger does.

Sometimes while reading these books, I feel as though some of the characters are thrown in just to fill some space and make the story longer. But by the end of the book they have resolved themselves, so that’s good. But thinking about it really bothers me.

But on a good note, and a not so good note, a lot of secrets and choices have been revealed now in the second installment to the Morganville Vampires series, so that means a lot more stuff is heading our way in Morganville.

Overall, this was a great read, as was the first installment. I highly recommend this series; it’s now officially in my top favorite series and recommendations.


I recommend this series to all vampire lovers. 

Cover: The cover is pretty, but not one of my favorites. 

Old Review: Glass Houses by Rachel Caine

Glass Houses by Rachel Caine
The Morganville Vampires, book #1 


Next book in series: The Dead Girls' Dance
Publisher: NAL Jam
Mass Market Paperback: 256 Pages
Age Group: Young Adult (13+)
Buy: Glass Houses
Source: Own
Date Read: April 2010
Overall: 

College freshman Claire Danvers has had enough of her nightmarish dorm situation. When Claire heads off-campus, the imposing old house where she finds a room may not be much better. Her new roommates don't show many signs of life, but they'll have Claire's back when the town's deepest secrets come crawling out, hungry for fresh blood.

First Lines: On the day Claire became a member of the Glass House, somebody stole her laundry.

I’m going to start with the fact that at the time when I went to read this, I had been in a complete reading rut for a long while, it took me months to read just one book when normally it took me from a few hours to a few days to complete a book, depending on their size. But then I decided to try and get back into my reading and I remembered the Morganville Vampires series. I owned books one through five at the time, and I hadn’t read them yet. Except for the fact I started reading Glass Houses a long time ago when I checked it out at the library, but then had to bring it back before I had finished it. 

I had only gotten not even halfway through. After my birthday one year I decided to order all the books that were currently out in the series with a Books-a-Million gift card I had received. I remembered how much I had loved the bit I had read and so I grabbed Glass Houses, hoping it would be the book to snatch me out of my reading rut. 

And guess what, it did! The world Rachel Caine has created is so different from the normal worlds of books with vampires in them. Truthfully, it is so hard to find a good vampire book these days with a unique plot and storyline, because sadly most of it has already been used before, which is really sad to a vampire lover like me. 

When I learned that the town was run by vampires and that all the humans that lived in Morganville knew, it completely blew my mind! And not only that, but the vampires in the Morganville Vampires are bad! Not all of them are, but most. 

All I can say it that Rachel Caine is brilliant. She has also become an inspiration to my writing, so kudos to her for that as well.

I really loved the main characters. Claire kind of annoyed me at first, but later as she started developing more she became more real to me and less annoying. I absolutely love, love, love Eve. And Shane and Michael as well, god they are hot! But Eve is my favorite character. 

All I can say about Monica though is that I wanted to slap her 99% of the time. I really wish someone would kick her butt. 

Not only do I love the characters, and basically everything else about this book, but the cover. It’s really pretty. I know you should never judge a book by its cover, but a good story should always have a beautiful cover. Am I right?

The end of this book ended with a complete cliffhanger. Seriously made my jaw drop and run to my shelf to grab the second book, The Dead Girls’ Dance. Sometimes I hate cliff hangers, but in this case I had the next book so it didn’t bother me much. Except for the five seconds it took to grab the next installment.

Overall, I thought that Glass Houses was a great first edition to the Morganville Vampires series and it’s now one of my favorite series. I highly recommend this book. It’s a must read for vampire lovers, fantasy lovers and just book lovers. If you haven’t read Glass Houses you should really grab a copy of it, or at least borrow it from the library or a friend. You do NOT want to miss out on this book. 


Cover:
I love the cover. It's very dark, and mysterious and I love the picture of the house in the background. 
I recommend this to: All vampire fans. Period.