This book is apparently labeled as YA. I’m not entirely sure about that. It feels in ways like she wrote an older vampire novel and then moved the characters’ ages down three to five years (and knocked out some sex) in order to make it properly YA. So while the main characters are all eighteen or under and the romance is strictly PG, it’s a bit dark. However, it’s an interesting view of vampires.

The main character, Claire Danvers (hm, Rebecca much?) is a sixteen-year-old girl genius. However, because she is so young, her parents wouldn’t let her go off to college at MIT or CalTech or any of the other places she actually wanted to go. Instead, she had to go to TPU: Texas Prairie University, located in the small town of Morganville, TX. Apparently it’s within a fairly short driving range of her parents, although they do mention a distance of ‘a few hundred miles’ once in the book. TPU is a terrible school; people either transfer or graduate. In any case, within her first few days there, Claire makes an enemy; apparently a really heinous one, because after throwing her clothes into a dumpster, the girl (Monica) and her friends beat her pretty badly. Claire decides she can’t stay in that dorm (which was the worst one on campus, anyway) any longer, and finds an ad for three people in a house looking for a fourth roommate.

Once she gets to the house (the Glass House), she meets Eve, Shane, and Michael (who is surnamed Glass), and discovers exactly why making an enemy of Monica was such a bad idea. Unfortunately, this means her life is in danger, and there are very few ways to save it. She’s safe as long as she’s inside that particular house, but other places, especially after dark, Claire had better watch out . . .

First of all, I don’t understand why she had to go to TPU, a school obviously without merit. Rice is in Texas, as is Baylor, and a bunch of other schools with killer med schools, so I’d assume their undergrad doesn’t suck too badly. If you have to go to a nearby school – and we don’t know exactly where Claire came from – why couldn’t her parents at least pick one without such a high dropout/transfer rate? She’s the standard super-genius-with-stage-parents-and-no-social-skills that seems to be pretty prevalent. All I can say is that if I, for some reason, had a super-genius kid who graduated at sixteen, I’d let her go to MIT right away. I’m fairly well certain that they’ve had super-genius sixteen-year-olds at MIT before and they know what to do with them.

Second, the vampires as characters. They’re interesting, actually – they seem to run the town like a mob. I can’t really say my favorite thing about the vampires, because that would give away the end of the book, but they’re not exactly Anne Rice or Laurell K. Hamilton’s vampires. (Or, thank God, Stephenie Meyer’s.)

Third, the characters. Okay, so Claire is a tad, but not completely, flat. However, she’s certainly not a source of wish-fulfillment. Her life sucks, especially at the moment. I mean, she’s forced to go to a terrible school; she really has flaws in the social department; she’s basically under house arrest for most of the book. Not exactly my ideal life. Monica, the Bad Guy, is of course flat. By now I think we expect big-haired Texas blondes to be evil, anyway. Eve, Shane, and Michael are all interesting, Michael the most of all. (And no, it’s not because he’s the love interest. He isn’t.) Michael’s probably the most interesting character in the book, for a variety of reasons, most of which I can’t give away without ruining parts of the book.

Fourth, vampires as plot. It’s kind of refreshing when vampires are bad guys. I mean, we’ve had so many books for so long that write vampires as sexy Red Cross stations – you know, they take like a pint and everything’s fine. As much as I loves me my Tanya Huff vampires (hey, go watch “Blood Ties” on Lifetime – shut up about the network), occasionally it’s nice to see the Humans vs. Vampires line.

All in all, it’s flawed but interesting, and if you’re a YA who really wants more vampire books, this is definitely one to grab and devour. A warning: It ends with a cliffhanger. There’s a sequel; we might get the review of that next week, if I feel like it. Older readers have to be willing to suspend disbelief on Claire’s schooling choices. I’ll give this 3.5/5 stars.