REVIEW by Jena: The Dead Girls’ Dance (Morganville Vampires #2) by Rachel Caine (@rachelcaine)

Claire 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. On the up side, she has a new boyfriend with a vampire-hunting dad. But when a local fraternity throws the Dead Girls’ Dance, hell is really going to break loose.

The Dead Girls’ Dance is the 2nd installment in the Morganville Vampires series. I am very new to this series but on the whole, I like it.

This second book I felt was much better than the first book in the series. Now that we are familiar with the cast, there’s a lot more plot to the story than the Getting to Know You game. Obviously we will get characters that pop up here and there but let’s be honest, they usually end up dead anyway so who cares?

I found that I didn’t mind Claire quite so much in this installment. She’s still immature as hell but she’s 16 so we really cant expect her to be worldly and sage. Instead, we get a normal 16 year old girl. She’s brainier (is that a word?) than most 16 year olds when it comes to books but she’s still just as brainless in some senses. Liiiiiike boys. Shane. She is jail bait. He knows she’s jail bait. The cops, judges and all other forms of authority in the town are OWNED by the vamps who would really like to see her head on a pike and yet she keep pushing his metaphorical envelope. Dummy.

She’s also that cliche girl in horror movies who is almost always running in the wrong direction. She gets herself into more crap situations than I ever would have imagined possible just simply by making the obviously WRONG choice. She always smarts her way out of a situation or stumbles out of it thanks to sheer dumb luck but she gets out alive. Which is more than I can say for some other characters that we know and love but I am going to leave that one alone and just dangle that teaser out there. It’s a good one. Great plot twist that made me want to cry.

On a side note: I LOVE EVE!!! She’s fantastic. She’s damaged (which makes her fun to analyze the crap out of). She’s snarky and sassy and sarcastic and all the other S-words I strive to be. She’s a fun character to read. Fanfic moment – it would have been really cool to see her take the lead role in this. I imagine there would be a lot more dead vamps and LOTS of gunfire! Explosions! AWESOMENESS!

Ok, I am done.

Overall, I am giving The Dead Girls’ Dance 3 stars. Good book but again, not ground breaking. I’d like to see it take a more edgier approach. And by edgy, I dont mean jail bait trying to seduce the adult boy who is trying his hardest to do what’s right. Claire……. *shaking my head*