Dead Girls' Dance ( Spoiler free!)

Review Time! So a few weeks ago I posted up my review of this first book in the Morganville Vampires series – Glass House, Bottom line, I loved it and if you haven’t read the series, I strongly encourage you to do. Anyway here is my (spoiler-free) review of the second book…

(Goodreads) 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.

The Short Story? - Just as good as the first book if not better! A lot more action packed into this novel and readers are introduced to new characters. Twists and turns throughout the book along with a BIG SHOCKER, that I didn’t see coming. More romance * cheers* and did I mention it was amazing?

The Long Story? – What makes a good book? Romance, hot guys, lots of action, originality, well portrayed characters and comfortable writing style. There a complete list of what I think makes a good book and believe it or not, Dead Girl's Dance had all of the above. I couldn’t stop turning the pages, I finished the complete 380 pages in one day!

One of the highlights of the novel for me was the change of pace. Unlike in Glass House where most of the action was packed into the latter half of the novel. Every single page of this novel was interesting and filled with action, every page was essential to the bigger picture. Part of the reason, I would say is because unlike most sequels where there is a long period between the two books, Dead Girls' Dance picked up right from where Glass House finished! There wasn’t one boring moment in this novel! As soon as one problem was solved another one appeared! Not the mention that the development in the plot was a shocker! Like I said in my review of Glass House, it’s refreshing to read vampire fiction about how vampires should be – a little creepy, not all that good looking and certainly not sparkly.

Another highlight? The development in romance. In this book, both Shane and Claire’s and Michael and Eve’s blossom so readers get a bigger snippet of love story between the roomies. It’s confirmed that Shane and Claire are ‘officially’ a couple even though we all knew that from the first book but it was nice to her the‘girlfriend’ come out of Shane’s mouth ;) As for Michael and Eve, all I can say is that they must really care for each other, in this book something happens to Michael that changes him forever but even than Eva can still love him which I think it’s the cutest thing ever. Again, the romance isn’t clichéd, we don’t have a vampire and human romance but a human and human romance ( sorta) which is ‘refreshingly’…normal (in vampire fiction :P)

The characters are portrayed really well and it’s easy to make connection with them as readers, whether it is their human emotions or the close relationship between all four roomies. Each character has a distinctive personality and when you put them all together, they’re as funny as hell! The ‘bonding’ between the four really is something I envy, when I get roomies, I want to have roomies like Shane, Eve, Michael and Claire ;)

Last but not least, fantastic writing! Strong voice for each of the characters and the narrator. Comfortable to get into and allows reader to slip right into the book. The writing style isn’t too formal so that it’s difficult to understand the choice of language. Rachel Caine really is a fantabulous writer ;)

Overall, I enjoyed this one even better than the first one, it was action packed and romance packed. I strongly encourage you guys to go pick up the first copy and give it a go because it’s a totally AWESOME series! Great writing, fantastic characters, lots of romance and full of action! Rating 5/5

Badass Bookie xx