Book Review: The Dead Girl's Dance

TITLE: The Dead Girls Dance
Book 2 in The Morganville Vampires series
AUTHOR: Rachel Caine
PUBLISHED: 2007
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: Vampires, urban fantasy
PREMISE: Claire and company continue to deal with the vampires of Morganville and now Shane's crazy dad is in the mix...
MY REVIEW: I will say that I like this series. There is something intriguing enough about it that keeps me reading. However, I'm not in love with it like I am with Vampire Academy. I think it's a multitude of things that do so but two major ones are mostly to blame.
The first one is: the characters are flat to me, particularly Claire who is the main character. Don't get me wrong, there is SOME characterization. Caine does actually try. Unfortunately she doesn't try hard enough because really these characters are more stereotypes then characters. I feel no real attachment to them as a result.
The second reason, kind of ties into the character thing: it's too over the top. I think Caine is too focused on having excitement/angst/romance and then some and cramming it all in less the three hundred pages that the characterization sort of gets lost in the shuffle as result. Seriously, like every ten pages Claire or one of her friends are running for their lives, dealing with danger, or angsting over something. Then suddenly they go into cute couple mode. It's rather inconsistant. I'm all for excitement but there needs to be a balance. Look at Sookie Stackhouse. There are a lot of things happening in a single Sookie book, but Harris never forgets to add in character developement as well which makes me more attached to Sookie and co. Here, I don't really feel any attachment, I just want to know how all this going to go down, but I won't cry very hard if any characters are killed.
Those two things I think are what keep me from truly loving and enjoying this series. I like it well enough that I'm continuing it but if I never pick up the next book, I'll manage you know? About the only character I feel strongly about is Monica: I want her to get either her butt kicked or to get some sort of payback because her character is utterly dispicable (but once again it's also over the top).
WHO SHOULD READ: Twilight fans, House of Night fans, vampire fans
MY RATING: Three out of Five crosses

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