Book Review: The Dead Girls' Dance

Title:  The Dead Girls' Dance
Author:  Rachel Caine
Pages:  238
Publication Date:  2007
Version:  Paperback
Genre:  Young Adult Fiction/Paranormal

Summary Via Goodreads.com:
"Claire Danvers has her share of challenges---like being a genius in a school that favors beauty over brains, dealing with the homicidal girls in her dorm, and above all, finding out that her college town is overrun with vampires. On the up side, she has a great roommate (who tends to disappear at sunup) and a new boyfriend named Shane, whose vampire-hunting dad has called in backup: cycle punks who like the idea of killing just about anything.

Now a fraternity is throwing its annual Dead Girls' Dance and---surprise!---Claire and her equally outcast best friend, Eve, have been invited. When they find out why, all hell is going to break loose. Because this time both the living and the dead are coming out---and everybody's hungry for blood."

My Review:
A lot has happened to Claire since she moved to Morganville and started college there.  Living on campus was rough, but she has learned that living off campus has been even harder, what with living with a Goth girl, a sexy peer, and a part ghost.  When things really hit the fan, Shane called in his Dad for help.  That may sound like a good thing, but when he shows up all he wants to do is kill all the vampires in Morganville, and that is a bad thing because that is against the law and punishable by death.  Worst part is that he drags his son/Claire's new boyfriend, Shane into it all and soon Shane is fighting for his life from his own father and the vampires that run the town.  When Claire gets invited to a party she is confused and leery and it turns out she really should have been.  Things go from bad to worse when things go very wrong at the party.  Soon there is nothing on people's minds but revenge and blood, which is never a good thing when you are just trying not to get killed.  Can Claire help Shane in time to save his life?  Is there any way out of the predicament they are in with the vampires for not telling them that Shane's Dad was back and out for their blood?  Who will help them when the police are all under the orders of the vampires?  Will they all die trying to figure things out?

I was quite excited to read this book, as I had read the first one some time ago and loved it.  This book did not disappoint me in the action, adventure, and fast paced plot of it all.  It is one of the few books of a series that I can honestly say is way better when you read the first one too.  You could probably read it not having read the first one, but a lot of things would not make sense fully.  What I loved was the fact that it flowed so well with the first book.  I felt like it was just more pages in the first book.  There was no lull, no chapters upon chapters of re-cap, it just picked right up where the last one left off.  I loved that!  I plan to read the next book in the series now, because I am hoping it feels the same.  Sometimes when I read series I have to stop because it just is too much repeating and I need a break, but I feel that this series is written in a way that makes me want to sit down and read book after book after book of it to see what happens next.  To say I love the characters is an understatement!  Eve, Michael, Shane, and Claire are just the most amazing characters I have ever read about.  They are all so different from each other, but share an unbreakable bond that you can only hope to find in friends.  The quirky ways of each character make them that much more lovable to me.  The friendship aspect of it all and the love that they share adds so much to the book.  They are so well developed, yet keep growing as you read on, that's amazing!  I like watching Claire grow up too.  The plot is different than the first book, but yet the same.  As in it just feels like it flows and fits from the first one to this one.  I can't say enough good about this book or this series so far.  I love, love, love it!  The vividness in which Caine writes the books is fantastic.  I can see the book playing out in my mind with no hiccups in my view.  If you have not read this book or the first one in this series "Glass Houses" you really must read them!  

The book itself I give a very strong 5/5 Stars!!!

The publisher...I give a 3/5 Stars.  Now I normally do not rate anything but the book content, but I feel I need to make known that there is a huge flaw in the printed book itself.  I actually went to the local library (well a couple of them) and found the same flaw in all the books there also.  Perhaps there is a reprint somewhere, but I didn't find one, unless it is at the bookstore.  In the middle of chapter 9 the book pages stop and go back to the middle of a chapter from earlier in the book.  This continues for 30+ pages.  It is previous chapters inserted into the middle of chapter 9.  Kind of like a really bad commercial, it happens in the middle of a crucial part of something.  Then it picks up the page before chapter 10.  The chapters in this book are longer so you miss a lot of information.  It never contains the missing pages either...anywhere.  Because of the authors writing style I was able to piece together what happened, but I know it hurt how I felt about the book because I missed vivid details that I love this author for.  So perhaps if buying this book, look for a reprint of it after the 2007 version I read and found.