Book Review: Glass Houses by Rachel Caine
Glass Houses (The Morganville Vampires #1) by Rachel CainePaperbackTBR pileAllison & Busby, 2006 Synopsis- The debut of an exciting new series set in Morganville, Texas, where you would be well advised to avoid being out after dark.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. Will she be able to face the town's terror or will she drown like everyone else?
Review- I’ve had the first four books of this series (in two volumes) sitting on my bookself for a long time. I’ve seen some fantastic reviews about the series so I thought it was about time I give it a go.
To be honest, I was hoping I wouldn’t like it. It’d be a relief to not get hooked on another series.
Despite my best intentions, I did enjoy Glass Houses. Too much! And because the next book was already in my hands (combined in volume 1) there was no excuse to just keep on reading! I’ll be starting on volume 2 soon… darn!
Anyway, there have been plenty of summaries for this book so I won’t go into the plot too much. Basically, 16 year old Claire starts college at Morganville as an advanced placement for her physics degree. She’s super smart (she mentions that a lot!) and quickly becomes the target of bullying by the “hot but not so smart” clan led by Monica Morrell, the mayor’s daughter. After a rather serious attempt to kill her, Claire flees the dorms and is reluctantly accepted as the new housemate at Glass Houses, where eighteen year old Michael, Shane and Eve reside. It’s there she discovers that vampires exist and are accepted (somewhat) in the Morganville community. Unfortunately, given Monica’s connections, Claire is a target yet again… this time by the vamp society. Her friends get pulled into the mess and before we know it they are all in big trouble.
I liked the four main characters in the book (housemates: Michael, Shane, Even & Claire) and I particularly liked seeing Claire become assertive and take charge of her life. What I didn’t like was the ongoing reference to her being a ‘kid’ and ‘jailbait’ by her friends because of her age. This made it hard for the reader to forget her age… so I was a little torn about whether I wanted her to have a relationship with Shane who is two years older. In Australia, the legal age is 16 for consensual sexual relationships (I think!)… in the US it’s obviously older so a much bigger deal if a 16 year old hooks up with an 18 year old than over here (in a legal sense anyway).
Anyway, whether I wanted to or not, I was drawn into the plot… I didn’t know what was going to happen and I really wanted to… so that’s why I got through the book so quickly. The cliffhanger for Glass Houses was a little unfair… because I was all ready to put the book down-but couldn’t- and ended up continuing right on to book 2!
Overall Rating
3.5/5
"I really liked this"
Glass Houses can be purchased from Fishpond and other leading book retailers