Review: The Dead Girl's Dance by Rachel Caine

The Dead Girl's Dance
(The Morganville Vampires - Book Two)
Rachel Caine

My Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥

Description:

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

My Review:

I'm just going to start this review by coming out and admitting that by the time I finished the second book in the series I had completely and utterly fallen in love with The Morganville Vampires.

It's violent, dark and doesn't butcher the vampire mythology like so many other books and series do in this genre. In a lot of ways it also reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not that they're vampire ~slayers~ but the political elements of the things that go bump in the night and the scooby-gang feel to Claire, Eve, Shawn and Michael's little group.

Despite the summary, and the title, this book actually has very little to do with the Dead Girl's dance hosted by the EEK frat. Claire's invited at the start of the book and the actual party only makes up less than two chapters and isn't exactly relevant to the main plot.

Which is Shawn's vampire slaying father showing up in town, which ultimately causes Shawn to get blamed for a vampire murder and sentenced to death by fire. We get filled in on Shawn's time outside of Morganville and what happened to his mother along with growth within his relationship with Claire.

The relationship between Shawn and Claire also continues to be one of my favorite elements of the series. They're slowly making their way to being one of my favorite couples in the ya genre. It's not 'omg-most-realistic-romance-ever!' but it doesn't sugarcoat the issues they have (especially with her jailbait status and the fact they want to have sex, yay for teens having hormones).

Like I mentioned earlier, the book also continues to be violent and dark. Which is obviously not everyone's cup of tea but I love it. I just personally believe any book that involves monsters should include at least some senseless blood and gore. I'm old fashioned like that.

I also like the fact that the book doesn't present a black-and-white depiction of who is good and who is evil. There are human's in the book who do evil things, for no real reason. Along with vampire's actions and morals, for a lack of a better word. For example, in terms of contracts the vampires have human's sign that make them their slaves? It's pointed out that most of them come from a time where "owning" slaves or you servants was extremely common. It doesn't make it right, but it weakens the wrong or evil element.

In conclusion: I'm in love with this book and it was a improvement over Glass Houses. I'm looking forward to the third book in the series.

If you want to read my review for the first book in the series, Glass Houses, click here.

Teaser Tuesday

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Jane Austin and Seth Grahame-Smith

The limbs broke off, and the unmentionable fell to the ground, helpless. She retrieved her dagger and beheaded the last of her opponents, lifting its head by the hair and letting her battle cry be known for a mile in every direction.

Teaser Tuesday is an awesome meme by Should be Reading. Check it out.

Let's Try This Again...Pretty New Layout, Possible Contest and Place to Get Books!

So I have a new layout, which is beautiful and amazing. Apparently it wasn't letting people comment but I seem to have fixed that by just using the pop up feature. So if someone wants to be a doll and comment here to insure that it's working right I'd love you.

Also, I am currently at 40 follows which is awesome. When I hit 50 I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a contest to celebrate :D We'll see how that pans out.

Finally, I saw a post a few days ago that listed places online and such to get books in order to review. Sadly I lost the link :(. And someone mentioned netgalley, which seems like an awesome site but I'm hesitant to use it because it says you need to be a professional and sadly I am not. Anyone know anything about it? Or similar sites?

In My Mailbox (5)

In My Mailbox
Week Five

I'm doing this a few days early, again, because I picked up some weekend shifts at work and I'm not entirely sure how much I'll be around this weekend. I wasn't actually planning on picking up any books this week because working this much overtime has seriously impacted my reading time so I'm way behind on my 'to-read' pile.

However, two of my holds from the library finally became available and I couldn't stop myself from picking them.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton - and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers - and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.

First thoughts: I'm only about thirty pages into this but I'm really enjoying it so far. Pride and Prejudice has always had a special place in my heart so I'm loving this "version" of it. I've read the original so it's also interesting to see how he worked in the zombie elements.

Hex Hall

Rachel Hawkins

Three years ago, Sophie Mercer discovered that she was a witch. It's gotten her into a few scrapes. Her non-gifted mother has been as supportive as possible, consulting Sophie's estranged father - an elusive European warlock - only when necessary. But when Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, it's her dad who decides her punishment: exile to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, faeries, and shapeshifters.

By the end of the her first day among fellow freak-teens, Sophie has quite a scorecard: three powerful enemies who look like supermodels, a futile crush on a gorgeous warlock, a creepy tagalong ghost, and a new roommate who happens to be the most hated person and only vampire on campus. Worse, Sophie soon learns that a mysterious predator has been attacking students, and her only friend is the number-one suspect.

As a series of blood-curdling mysteries starts to converge, Sophie prepares for the biggest threat of all; an ancient secret society determined to destroy all Prodigium, especially her.

First thoughts: sdfkjaskldf <- For real, I did a happy dance when I got the notice this book had arrived. I was expecting it to take a lot longer to get to my local library than it did. It's pretty much taking everything in me to finish the two books I already started (or at least one) before I start on it...and knowing me, I'll probably cave by tomorrow night.

This Weeks Reviews
(click book cover for review)

Apparently last weeks theme was covers with legs.

I also posted the super-short teaser from ABC Family for Pretty Little Liars, cause y'all know how much I adore that series. You want watch it here.

In My Mailbox is an awesome weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren so check it out.

Trailer: Pretty Little Liars TV Promo

I'm a firm believer that books will always be superior to whatever movie or show they're made into but I'm really excited to see this show.

Pretty Little Liars is easily one of my favorite ya series so definitely going to be tuning in for this.

Review: The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

The Dark Divine
Bree Despain

My Rating:

Back of the Book:

A Prodigal Son.

A Dangerous Love.

A Deadly Secret.

Grace Divine - daughter of the local pastor - always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kallbi disappeared and her brother Jude came home covered in his own blood.

Now that Daniel's returned, Grace must choose between her growing attraction to him and her loyalty to her brother.

As Grace gets closer to Daniel, she learns the truth about that mysterious night and how to save the ones she loves, but it might cost her the one thing she cherishes the most: her soul.

My Review:

The Dark Divine, for me, is like that movie everyone you know has seen and is raving about. It's amazing, epic, etc. Even your granny dragged herself into the theaters to check it out. Only, it doesn't really appeal to you and the trailer is kinda blah but when it comes out on DVD you rent it just to see what everyone is talking about.

And you kinda end up loving it.

I went into this book with very little knowledge of it, other than the main character was a pastor's daughter and it had a theme of forgiveness. I know that normally this is the part where I recap the story but I'm not going to with The Dark Divine because part of the appeal is watching it all unravel as the story goes on. It's done beautifully.

I'd be lying if I said Grace was my favorite female lead character but she wasn't annoying and did experience some nice character growth. I ended up really loving Daniel and really wish the book had focused a bit more on his life during the time he was gone and what he had fallen into to. It's implied but for the most part brushed over fairly quickly.

I was unsure of the religious theme in the book, with the belief that it may come off preachy. I've never been keen on Christian fiction, and while this doesn't fall into that category, it was one of the reasons it hadn't originally appealed to me. However, the religious elements worked well within the story. I ended up really liking Grace's father as well.

The book, however, wasn't perfect. I read the vast majority of it this weekend. For the first third of the book it was almost impossible for me to put down (which kind of sucked because I was filling in for some extra money and kept having to put the book down to help customers). However, the ending didn't have the effect on me.

I actually had to force myself to pick up the book and finish the last fifty or so pages because it was due back at the library. I'm not saying the ending was bad, it wasn't. It just wasn't up to par with the rest of the book and I think it came off to rushed.

Which is why I am giving the book a high four stars. It's definitely worth reading, just make sure you have a lot of free time before you start.

Teaser Tuesday

The Dark Divine
Bree Despain

I still hated the way he'd made me want to forget - even for a moment - who I was.

How could I help Daniel find his way, without losing mine?

p. 93

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