Review: Glass Houses

Glass Houses (Morganville Vampires #1), by Rachel Caine. The GoodReads summary:

From the author of the popular Weather Warden series comes the debut of an exciting new series set in Morganville, Texas, where you would be well advised to avoid being out after dark.

College freshman Claire Danvers has had enough of her nightmarish dorm situation. When Claire heads off-campus, the imposing old house where she finds a room may not be much better. Her 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.

I knew by a few chapters in that I wasn’t going to like this book. And yet I kept on reading anyway because I really hoped that it was going to get better. Which sadly it didn’t. I just really wanted to like this book because I’ve been looking for a good paranormal series to get into ever since I finished the Vampire Academy books a WHILE ago. Alas, judging from this book, this is not the series for me.

Out of all the things that frustrated and annoyed me about the book, hands down the worst thing was Claire, the main character. She drove me beyond crazy, and I couldn’t find a single redeeming thing about her. Can I just list a few of the things that I disliked about her?

1) She’s totally a weak character and has to be saved by someone else every other chapter. And yet, she keeps doing stupid stuff and not listening to advice and runs around town like an idiot despite the fact that a bunch of different people want to kill her. And then she has to be saved by someone else AGAIN—I can’t think of a single time when she actually saves her own butt.

2) She refuses to leave school/town despite the fact that VAMPIRES are out to kill her. She keeps going on about how leaving school will ruin her future, but I’m just like, “Dude. Being DEAD will ruin your future.”

3) She thinks that just because she’s book-smart, she knows enough to screw over a whole society of vampires, even though she knows absolutely nothing about them. Which of course backfires on her.

4) She has basically no problem accepting that vampires and ghosts are real, but she refuses to believe that psychics could be real too? Where is the logic in that?

So those are just the main things that bug me about darling Claire. Ug. To be completely honest, I semi-hoped that the vampires would manage to kill her just so I didn’t have to deal with her any more.

I did think the whole idea of a town being run by vampires was interesting, but the book didn’t go into much detail about it, so it didn’t save the book for me. I will give the book props for ending with a good cliffhanger, but I don’t think I could endure any more of Claire in order to find out what happens next. I am kinda curious about how the whole series works out, but I seriously doubt I’ll be reading any of the other books.

Overall, definitely not the book for me. Claire just drove me too up the wall, and the rest of the characters and plot weren’t well-developed enough to redeem the book. I do know some people who enjoy this series, though, so if it sounds interesting to you, go on and check it out—it’s just really not my cup of tea.

Rating: 2 / 5