Midnight Alley by R. Caine

I don’t know what it is about young adult fiction, but whenever I’m getting stuck in a reading rut, I can usually count on a YA title to bring me out of it. It doesn’t always work, but Rachel Caine’s Midnight Alley did it for me this time.

Claire Danvers’s college town may be run by vampires but a truce between the living and the dead made things relatively safe. For a while. Now people are turning up dead, a psycho is stalking her, and an ancient bloodsucker has proposed private mentoring. To what end, Claire will find out. And it’s giving night school a whole new meaning.

I have to say, I liked the first novel, Glass Houses, in the Morganville Vampires series, but I definitely like this one better.  One of my biggest complaints again any YA novel is the over use of age.  I get it, they are young, move on finally.  For some reason, this seemed especially true while I was reading Glass Houses, but with Midnight Alley, we’ve moved on.  There is still the young adult feel to the novel, but it’s not quite so obvious.  We’re not constantly reminded that Claire is the youngest person in college or that she’s jailbait and needs to be careful with Shane.  This may seem trivial to some, but it’s the main reason I haven’t continuaed reading this series to date.  After reading The Dead Girls Dance, I got tired of the age card being played so I moved on to a different series.  However, after reading Midnight Alley, I have Feast of Fools sitting next to me and plan on starting that next.

Midnight Alley gave us a deeper look into the vampires of Morgansville and clued us in on the main reason they settled there.  Some of the character dynamics have changed and it causes some internal issues with our primary four characters, but it also gives us a lot more angst.  I like the change in dynamics, but the events in Midnight Alley are going to make the future novels a little more intriguing, at least for me.

Overall, I enjoyed Midnight Alley and I’m going to start up the next novel for sure.  I have books sitting on my desk right now that need to be read, but I’m not in a mood for dark or intense and that’s what I have.  One thing I have to give the Morganville Vampires series, it has the elements to be dark and twisty, but it doesn’t go there.  The atmosphere is kept light enough so one doesn’t get too emotional, but you’re still invested in what is going on.  Perfect for someone who wants an easy escape.

Read Order:
Glass Houses
the Dead Girls Dance
Midnight Alley
Feast of Fools
Lord of Misrule
Carpe Corpus (6/3/209)

Also Reviewed By:
Amberkatze Reviews
Life is Precious

About Jackie 3282 Articles
I am a 30-something SAHM with two adorable boys and a supportive husband who is very tolerant of my reading addiction. I love to read and easily go through about a dozen books a month – well I did before I had kids. Now, not so much. After my first son was born, I began to take my hobby of reviewing a little more serious and started Literary Escapism to help with my sanity. I love to discuss the fabulous novels I’ve read and meeting all the wonderful people in the book blogging community has been amazing.

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