The Morganville Vampires, Volume 1: The Dead Girls' Dance by Rachel Caine

Paperback: 480 pages

Publisher: NAL Trade (November 3, 2009)

ISBN-10: 045123054X

ISBN-13: 978-0451230546

The Dead Girls' Dance

Claire may have a great roommate and a new boyfriend, but when she's invited to the Dead Girls' Dance all hell breaks loose-literally. Because this time, the living and the dead are ready to tear up the night...

Review:

Overall, the pacing was significant because it catered to the necessary transactions and confrontations happening throughout the book. It was intriguing to delve further into the lives of Claire's roommates. The thing was that the fact that Claire is the main character took away from the understanding of some of the characters decisions. It seemed too in-depth at times to read so much baggage behind each character--mostly Eve and Shane in this book--and not get a first-hand look at their thoughts, making me possibly consider that this book would have been better told in third person.

What I most disliked in this book was Claire's blatant disregard for the danger she was putting the people around her to save someone she thinks she might love. I mean, seriously? What is very clearly seen most often in the book is that Claire does not have any sense of self-preservation or common sense. It's not even that she's acting selflessly, just plain stupid when it comes to negotiating with the two biggest and baddest vampires in town. I died a little reading that scene.

Towards the ending I could have done without the slow pacing because it seemed to drag on and on and made it boring to read about. I had to skim the last ten pages because reading in detail felt like it was taking forever. After all the hype and suspense created throughout the book, you'd expect some sort of climax ending but all that Claire and her friends were working towards took on an insignificant view because everything they did to try and save someone's life was ultimately unnecessary. It was like they had enough means to save the person from the start but they had to panic and make stupid plans in order to keep themselves calm.

I did not enjoy reading The Dead Girls' Dance because while even the title is misleading, it was poor as a whole and was not pulled off in a way the reading would be able to follow and understand most of the characters' decisions.

Grade: C-

Source: Bought

LiLi