Dead Girls' Dance by Rachel Caine

Synopsis:

Welcome to Morganville. Just don`t stay out after dark...

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

The second book in Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampire series, Dead Girls' Dance picks up exactly where Glass Houses left off.

First off, this is not a comfortable book. It is much darker than the first - there are repurcussions to the happenings in the first novel and now Claire and her friends have to deal with a nasty situation - Michael has been killed by Shane's dad and his biker buddies, and things are pretty dire. Shane is helpless against his dad's anger and struggles to try and cope with his loyalty to his dad and his growing feelings for Claire whilst Eve is completely dumbstruck by the horror of watching Michael die infront of them.

This is just the first few pages of the book. And the pace keeps increasing. The friends have to figure out how to continue their lives whilst living under a microscope - everyone is watching them. The vampires, the humans and Shane's dad and his insane friends. Out of all of these, it is the humans that are the most dangerous - which makes and interesting twist on matters.

I found the book a quick and easy read - I'm not going into depth as to what happens, but needless to say, there are some heavy choices to be made by Claire, Shane, Eve and Michael. I had to keep on reading, to see how it evolves - there was no question of that. Ms. Caine's writing is just excellent - her characters are distinct, the two boys sound lovely and there are enough twists and turns to keep anyone happy.

I have the next two books lined up to read and will do so soon. I'll probably then do a comprehensive review of this series thus far.