Glass Houses

GLASS HOUSES by Rachel Caine
Category: Paranormal
Age Recommendation: Grades 9+
Release Date: 10/3/06
Publisher: Signet
Reviewed by: Jocelyn Pearce
Rating: 5 Stars

All Claire Danvers wanted was a normal college experience. Preferably somewhere far away, but when her parents send her
to Morganville, Texas, she's still glad to be going to college, even if she is, at sixteen, the youngest college student around.
Morganville is a small college town, and Claire's prepared to make the best of her fresh start. Unfortunately, things don't turn
out the way anyone expected or wanted them to.

At first, Claire's existence is made miserable by a few girls in her dorm who torment her. Dorm life, for Claire, is not all it's
cracked up to be--in fact, it's pretty much as miserable as she thinks it can get, so Claire decides to move out and find a
place off-campus. Luck is with her; she ends up at a spooky-looking mansion with a room she can actually afford, and three
roommates who actually turn out to be pretty cool, even if they have reservations about letting her move in at first. Michael,
Shane, and Eve are all eighteen, and Claire's a couple of years younger.

If Claire thought being harassed in her dorm was bad, she didn't know Morganville's secrets. When she moves out of the
dorm, however, she learns that there's more to Morganville than there seems to be. The town is run by vampires. Yes, actual
vampires that can't go out in the daytime and drink human blood at night. If Claire's not careful, it could end up being her
blood they're drinking...

GLASS HOUSES is a great book for fans of vampire novels. Claire and her roommates are quite likeable as characters,
and, perhaps making the book even better, the bad guys are just as easy to hate as the inhabitants of the Glass House are to
like. In Morganville, Rachel Caine has created a mysterious, intriguing, and spooky town run by the undead (I was a bit
reminded of Buffy's hometown of Sunnydale). The writing is great, and there are few flaws in this awesome book.

Claire doesn't ask nearly as many questions as might be expected of someone who had just been let in on the secret that
she's living in a town run by vampires; it seems like that might be a way of keeping some questions and suspense in the story,
but it struck me as a bit unrealistic while reading. Even with its minor flaws, though, this is a book that will have readers
hooked and ready for more in this series!