Morganville Vampires Series by Rachel Caine - Series Review

Since this is a series review I'm not going to give a summary of each book, but instead an overview of the series.

The Morganville Vampires series starts in Glass Houses with Claire Danvers starting college in Morganville at the age of 16. After trouble on the college campus with bullies, Claire found another place to stay. The Glass House already had three occupants - Michael Glass, the owner of the house, Eve Rosser, a Goth girl, and Shane Collins, the resident hottie. It isn't until after Claire moves into the Glass House that she realizes/learns that Morganville is a town run by vampires. As the series progresses, Claire finds herself more and more involved in the workings of Morganville and the vampires that rule the town. She even pledges herself to the most powerful vampire that lives there, Amelie. Books 2 - 7 record her adventures/trials throughout her time in Morganville.

Adventure, Romance, Suspense, Friendship - all of these describe the Morganville series. I thoroughly enjoyed each book. While Glass Houses wasn't the attention grabber that I expected it to be, I stuck it out and about halfway through I was hooked and couldn't read the rest quickly enough. As the series progressed I found myself sucked into the world of Morganville, wishing that I could be there for real. The twists in each book gave me whiplash over and over, but at the same time it was the twists that kept me coming back for more. The characters felt like my best friends as I read. I became emotionally invested in their lives in Morganville. (so much so that I actually found myself dreaming about Morganville each night that I read the series. that's never happened with a series that I can recall.) Rachel Caine did an incredible job with her characters. Even the evil characters often demanded your sympathy as a reader which amazed me, but it worked. Ms. Caine made sure to explain the background of her characters enough that I was able to understand why they were "evil". Granted, not all of the evil characters elicited sympathy. Many of them raised a level of hate and spite that I didn't think possible. With characters that were ever so realistic and places that seemed like a dream, the Morganville Vampires series kept my complete, devoted attention from halfway through the first book until the end of the seventh book. The only thing that I found myself questioning was the fact that Claire and her friends went through so much in such a short period of time. The happy parts of the books were great relievers of the tension that built up throughout the books, but the problems that the teens dealt with were sometimes overwhelming.

Overall, these books are definitely my favorite reads in such a long time. They definitely overshadow everything I read last year and so far this year. I am so excited about the 8th book being released in April 2010. I cannot WAIT!

Oh, and just a little background on how I managed to read the entire series so far in just three days. Sometime near the end of last year I visited my local used bookstore where I found books 4-7. My brother's fiancee, Shayla, was with me at the time and told me that she loved the books and that I would enjoy reading them. So I picked them up. Then, at the beginning of January, Shayla and I visited the bookstore again at which point I found books 1 and 2. Of course I bought them. That left me only book 3 to find. I told myself over and over that I was NOT going to start reading this series until I found book 2 at the used bookstore. A few weeks ago I promised my husband and myself that I would not purchase any new books from regular bookstores until April. (See, I have store credit at my used bookstore so I technically wouldn't be spending any money to shop there.) Last week I just couldn't make myself read my old books that I really needed to get to. The MV books were taunting me from their place on my shelf. So, I picked up book 1. I've normally don't have a problem starting a series and putting it aside, but as soon as I reached the middle of book 1 I knew this series was not normal. I headed straight to my used bookstore. But they didn't have book 3. I HAD to have it! So I went to Barnes & Noble. They didn't have it either. NOOOO! One last stop and I was going to pull my hair out if I couldn't find it there! But lucky for my hair, Borders had one last copy on their shelves. It was finally mine.

Because I work from 7:30am until 3:30pm each weekday I only had a few hours before work to read then the hours after work when I didn't have housework to do. Thankfully, snow was on the horizon. Friday saw me getting off work at noon so once I got home I immersed myself in the world of Morganville and didn't surface until I had finished the last book on Sunday at which point I headed outside to shovel snow .

All that to say. You HAVE to go out and get these books as soon as you possibly can if you enjoy reading books about vampires. You will love them!