Ghost Town - Book 9 of the Morganville Series by Rachel Caine

** WHAT IT'S ABOUT **

While developing a new system to maintain Morganville's defenses, student Claire Danvers discovers a way to amplify vampire mental powers. Through this, she's able to re-establish the field around this vampire-infested Texas college town that protects it from outsiders.

But the new upgrades have an unexpected consequence: people inside the town begin to slowly forget who they are-even the vampires. Soon, the town's little memory problem has turned into a full-on epidemic. Now Claire needs to figure out a way to pull the plug on her experiment- before she forgets how to save Morganville...

** WHAT I THOUGHT **

My first book review and since Vampire books are one of the, if not the, most popular books around, I thought this would be a great place to start!

I was sent this book by WHSmith to review and having seen the Twilight films and read a couple of the J.R.Ward Vampire series, I was very interested to read it! However, the cover said “Book Nine” and after a little google-ing, I discovered this was indeed the ninth book in a very interesting looking series.  I’d not heard of the Morganville Series before and not read any of the previous eight books, so was a little sceptical over whether I would be able to get into it and really enjoy it without knowing any of the previous storylines.  However, after only a few pages of reading those concerns were put to bed.  The book can certainly stand alone, although there are moments where it is clear you would understand more if you’d read the previous books but I certainly don’t feel this takes anything away from reading the book out of order.

SFX Magazine claims ‘Dump Meyer’s Twilight books and replace them with the Morganvilles’. Having not read the Twilight books, and only seen the films I cannot really comment on this claim.  However, I imagine that this series would certainly appeal to Twilight fans and since Vampire books are popping up all over the place now – I think this series is absolutely one to get your hands on!

I warmed very quickly to the main character, Claire, and this strengthens and develops as you get further into the book.  Rachel Caine has a wonderful way of making you feel the emotions of the characters – I went from loving to hating Myrnin many times throughout the book.  Shane is certainly a character for the girls, and if made into a film, I am sure that a suitably attractive actor would be enrolled!

I don’t want to give too much away storyline-wise, so all I will say is imagine a town full of both vampires and humans is hit by mass amnesia – carnage ensues and it is up to Claire to save Morganville!  The storyline is gripping and certainly kept me turning pages! In fact once I’d got to Chapter 7 I didn’t put the book down until it got to 2am and I had turned the last page. 

The part of the book in which Shane succumbs to the amnesia brings both heartbreaking and uplifting moments.  For any romance-lover, it is beautiful to see Claire and Shane fall in love again!  The interaction between Michael, Eve, Shane and Claire is wonderful.  All-in-all I really loved Rachel Caine’ portrayal of their friendship and alliance to one another.  Can’t wait to read the rest of the series!