Review: Glass Houses by Rachel Caine

The Morganville Vampires #1
Genre: Paranormal
Format: Audiobook
Published by AudioGo Ltd, 2010
Originally published 2006 by NAL Jam
Goodreads // Amazon UK

It’s a small college town filled with quirky characters. But when the sun goes down, the bad comes out. Because in Morganville, there is an evil that lurks in the darkest shadows—one that will spill out into the bright light of day.
Claire Danvers has had enough of her nightmarish dorm situation. The popular girls never let her forget just where she ranks on the school’s social scene: somewhere less than zero. And Claire really doesn’t have the right connections—to the undead who run the town.
When Claire heads off campus, the imposing old house where she finds a room may not be much better. Hew new roommates don’t show many signs of life. But they’ll have Claire’s back when the town’s deepest secrets come crawling out, hungry for fresh blood...

*Review of the Audio*: I thought the narrator spoke at an ideal pace and her voice was appealing. I really liked that there were very obvious and different voices for each of the characters and that they each seemed to have a clear personality. No gripes with the audio!

This book is what I would call a fun read. It's not the fastest paced book and there isn't a whole lot of action until the end, but it is rather enjoyable. The vampires in this book, while not amazingly original (but it's hard to do that these days), were actually rather intimidating. The more Claire got sucked into their exclusive and mysterious world of Morganville, the more I actually found them frightening. What also frightened me was the premise. Claire is a sixteen year old nerd living on a university campus. Her parents didn't want her to go far away for school, but as she's hours away from them she might as well be. She's beaten up within an inch of her life by female bullies just because no one else would stop it. That didn't make sense to me. Claire is very mature for her age and has quite a lot of lady balls for a sixteen year old. Why not just make her normal college freshman age? I didn't see the gain in her being sixteen. Maybe I'm missing something about crossing ages for wider audiences or other technical mumbo-jumbo.

Glass Houses isn't perfect. I could tell that it was the first instalment of a series, since the majority of the book was spent on character building. Claire and her roommates spent a lot of time drinking coke and eating with each other. When I look back on the book, while those moments were amusing and gave a lot of insight to Claire's new friends, there is an enormous contrast to the action parts of the book. I think, therefore, that there is a bite of a pacing issue going on. I enjoyed the characters very much and that's probably why I liked the book, but I felt like I'd be jerked to a hault sometimes.

Overall, it's a rather light read with some likeable characters and quite a bit of promise for books to come. I just thought that it was missing something. Whether that be better pacing or a slightly more believable premise, I'm not sure. I just might pick up the next book to listen to as my library has it!