The Dead Girl's Dance by Rachel Caine

Title: The Dead Girl's Dance
Author: Rachel Caine
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Released: April 3rd 2007
Pages: 380 (Paperback)
Buy: Amazon

Claire has her share of challenges. Like being a genius in a school that favours 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.



So I started the Morganville Vampire series a couple of weeks ago, and I was instantly hooked and had to take the next couple of books out of my school library for summer break. This novel, the second installment to the series, follows Claire, Eve, Michael and Shane as they try to deal with Shane's vampire hunter father, whilst still keeping within their rules of protection from Amelie, the Founder vampire.

Again, I loved the characters, and I loved how smoothly the plot went from the first book into the sequel - it was as if Caine just continued writing, then realized she'd written a pretty massive book, so decided to split it into two. The characters mostly had the same characteristics that they'd had in the first novel, apart from Eve - I know she's the brave, badass girl, but she went a bit crazy sometimes for no apparent reason, which I personally found a bit odd. Also, I got annoyed at how the girls acted around the guys. Every time they see them, they fling their arms around them and act all soppey, and with Shane, I can understand (spoilers, ish), but constantly? No. It made the girls look kind of needy, and I'm all for independant story heroins.

However, once again, I also had the problem that when I go back and think about the novel...nothing really happened. There was the stuff with Shane's dad, and a bit of Monica and Amelie and Jason, and a lot of police, but I still didn't feel that satisfaction I usually get at the end of a novel with a strong plot-line, which was a bit disappointing.

But nevertheless, I did still enjoy it. There is something very nice and simple about this series, which makes it easy to read. And the fact that the overall storyline surrounding the entire series is actually quite good, it makes it interesting - you can't help but be hooked.
Rating: 4/5