"plenty of fast-paced action"
Picking up exactly where Glass Houses left off, our
young genius heroine, Claire Danvers, finds herself in a
most unenviable position -- the pseudo hostage of a psycho
vampire killer bent on revenge, and who just happens to be
the father of her new boyfriend. As if her life isn't
complicated enough between being a 16 year (almost 17!) old
in college, having the campus beauty queen, who
incidentally is also a homicidal maniac, out for your blood
(literally), and living in a town that is run by vampires.
At least she still has her great roommates -- Eve, the Goth
girl; Michael, who keeps disappearing at sunup; and Shane,
her hot new boyfriend. Just when Clair thinks her life couldn't get any stranger,
she finds herself being invited by a really cute frat boy
to his fraternity's annual Dead Girls' Dance -- and she's
still not sure as to why. On top of all this she's
now made an enemy of Oliver - one of the elder vampires of
Morganville. Luckily she has also come to the attention of
Amelie, the oldest vampire known in existence, who
places Claire and her friends under her protection. When
one of the major vamp players ends up dead and Shane is
found next to the body, he's arrested and sentenced to
die. Unless of course, Claire can either 1) convince his
psycho dad to trade himself for Shane or 2) save Shane
herself. Ok, let me say that overall I really enjoyed this book.
The Dead Girls' Dance is the second in Rachel
Caine's young adult series, The Morganville Vampires. The
author sets a pace of non-stop action from beginning to end
and we find ourselves rooting for our young heroine. The
main characters all have a certain depth to them and I'm
enjoying finding out all their past histories. That being
said -- SPOILER ALERT -- I have a couple of issues with the
book. For one, when Clair attended the Dead Girls' Dance,
she is slipped a ruffie -- date rape drug. That in itself
didn't bother me so much as what happens afterward. As
Claire's roommate, Eve, and a vamp come to her rescue, the
three frat boys who had planned to rape her get off scot-
free! Their only punishment (and that's stretching it) is
a stern warning from the vamp to not do that again. I'm
sorry, but this book/series is geared to the teen crowd and
what kind of message is that sending to them? That if you
almost get raped, it's okay and you should just let
it slide -- no harm, no foul? I don't think so. I think
Ms. Caine should've handled this scenario differently and
more seriously. One other thing that slightly bothered me
was that Claire is supposedly a genius, but she continually
puts herself in dangerous situations. This is one of my
major pet peeves in characters. She's a classic case of
TSTL -- To Stupid To Live. It's one thing to be brave when
you have to be, but Claire continually keeps placing
herself in situations where, in the real world, she would
have long ago been vamp food (well, assuming vamps lived in
the real world, that is). Of course, maybe when I was 16 I
did inherently stupid things, as well. Okay, no maybe
about it, I know I did LOTS of incredibly stupid
things, but being a 30-something mom myself now obviously
alters my viewpoint on things and maybe that's why I have
such a hard time with Claire's actions. All-in-all, I did enjoy the book because like I mentioned
above, there was plenty of fast-paced action and the author
managed to pack several days worth of it into less than 250
pages. I plan on buying the rest of the series to find out
where our spunky, albeit TSTL, heroine and her roomies
takes us on their fantastical journey. However, if you do
have young daughters -- or sons for that matter -- who read
this series, I would definitely sit them down and have a
long talk about what happens in the near-rape scene because
there is no doubt in my mind that they should be made aware
that what happened there is completely unacceptable.
Reviewed by Mippy Carlson
Posted February 4, 2009
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Party till you drop.
Good news, girls: Your dates are here! 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 roomate (who tends to disappear at sun up) 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. Bad news, girls: They're dead. Now a fraternity is throwing its annual Dead Girls' Dance and - surprise! - Clarie 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.
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