Rachel Caine – Glass Houses

Book one of the Morganville Vampires series. Claire Danvers is a sixteen year old girl genius on and early intake into college having aces all of her high school exams. She was hoping to go to one of the big well known colleges but her parents decided that it would be best if she started off at TPU, a smaller more local college in Morganville, Texas before transferring to a better college further from home when she turns eighteen. What Claire and her parents didn’t know was that Morganville is not like other towns, it is run by vampires and can be a very dangerous place. Bullied by a girl in the dorm Claire moves out of the campus accommodation and into a house with Eve, Michael and Shane, three friends who grew up in the town. Claire soon begins to learn Morganville’s secrets and finds out that it can be a very dangerous place.

I wasn’t sure about this book to begin with. It’s clearly aimed at people half my age which was a little off putting. However, I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and I’m glad I did. If you’re looking for something deep and meaningful or literary genius you won’t find it in Glass Houses, but I read for entertainment and that is exactly what I got.

The characters are interesting. Claire is a small, quiet girl of high intelligence and slightly geeky who seems to have lead a fairly sheltered life. She also seems fairly mature for her age in many respects. Eve is an outspoken goth girl who works in the local coffee shop. Michael is a slightly mysterious musician who only seems to come out at night despite not being a vampire and Shane is a bit of a tough guy who is unemployed. There is also a fairly large cast of supporting characters, many of whom as interesting and I hope we’ll find out more about them throughout the series.

There’s not a huge amount of action in this book, a lot of it is getting to know the characters and the town but it still feels fairly fast paced throughout a lot of the book and that picks up more and more as the book goes on. I was quickly drawn into the story and when it ended I was keen to start on book two.

This was a quick read for me. It’s around 350 pages of fairly large text and I read it in a day. Looking forward to reading the rest of the series.