I picked up "Glass Houses" in an audible.com "First In A Series" sale, thinking that I was going to be trying out a new Urban Fantasy series like Kate Daniels or Mercy Thompson.
What I got was an intriguing idea: vampires founding and maintaining a small Texas town, Morganville, so they can farm the human livestock and using their second-rate college to freshen the bloodlines.
There's lots you could do with that.
What Rachel Caine decided to do with it was re-invent the Scoobie gang with our main character being a small, skinny version of Velma, Shaggy being a huge guy who plays videogames and cooks chilli, Daphne being a Goth Chick just to piss-off the real vampires and Fred is a tall, handsome, guitar player with a secret. Quite an original secret.
The writing works well. The dialogue is often snappy and fun.Nasty things lurk in the background of all of the scooby gang who live in the Glass House. There is some real violence and some bodily harm. Yet, overall there is a wholesomeness and simplicity to this tale of a bright sixteen year old girl who's never been kissed, making friends and facing up to vampires, that it was much more cute than chilling.
It's a good YA adventure, but the kind where someone has rounded off the tips of the scissor blades and made sure there are no sharp edges for you to cut your innocent imagination on.
This struck me as a cupcake series: light and sweet. If that's what you're looking for, this is a great place to start
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