I found this to be a pleasant surprise. It’s young adult, so it’s not super gory or super scary, but the girl-on-girl violence is super cruel and unfortunately, probably not much of an exaggeration. And the romances are sweet. I liked meeting Claire and her new roommates. Caine also makes Morganville a particularly creepy place to live. The feeling it invoked in me was like one of those dreams where you’re being chased and can’t find a way to escape. My one complaint about the book is that I didn’t like the last chapter with its manufactured cliff-hanger. I would have rather had that event open the next book – it didn’t really fit – but it wasn’t enough to discourage me from continuing with this series. ( )

Reviewed by Jocelyn Pearce for TeensReadToo.com

All Claire Danvers wanted was a normal college experience. Preferably somewhere far away, but when her parents send her to Morganville, Texas, she's still glad to be going to college, even if she is, at sixteen, the youngest college student around. Morganville is a small college town, and Claire's prepared to make the best of her fresh start. Unfortunately, things don't turn out the way anyone expected or wanted them to.

At first, Claire's existence is made miserable by a few girls in her dorm who torment her. Dorm life, for Claire, is not all it's cracked up to be--in fact, it's pretty much as miserable as she thinks it can get, so Claire decides to move out and find a place off-campus. Luck is with her; she ends up at a spooky-looking mansion with a room she can actually afford, and three roommates who actually turn out to be pretty cool, even if they have reservations about letting her move in at first. Michael, Shane, and Eve are all eighteen, and Claire's a couple of years younger.

If Claire thought being harassed in her dorm was bad, she didn't know Morganville's secrets. When she moves out of the dorm, however, she learns that there's more to Morganville than there seems to be. The town is run by vampires. Yes, actual vampires that can't go out in the daytime and drink human blood at night. If Claire's not careful, it could end up being her blood they're drinking...

GLASS HOUSES is a great book for fans of vampire novels. Claire and her roommates are quite likeable as characters, and, perhaps making the book even better, the bad guys are just as easy to hate as the inhabitants of the Glass House are to like. In Morganville, Rachel Caine has created a mysterious, intriguing, and spooky town run by the undead (I was a bit reminded of Buffy's hometown of Sunnydale). The writing is great, and there are few flaws in this awesome book.

Claire doesn't ask nearly as many questions as might be expected of someone who had just been let in on the secret that she's living in a town run by vampires; it seems like that might be a way of keeping some questions and suspense in the story, but it struck me as a bit unrealistic while reading. Even with its minor flaws, though, this is a book that will have readers hooked and ready for more in this series! ( )

Glass Houses is a fast paced novel, written simply and lightly. Although Caine’s writing style is not exactly great literature (it is somewhat reminiscent of the Sweet Valley High Series), the book is very engaging. Claire and her roommates are likable, admirable (if not entirely three dimensional) characters. The plot moves quickly, holding the reader’s interest and engaging a need to find out what happens next. And the budding romance between Claire and Shane is giggle-and-swoon worthy. The book is quite obviously meant to be one of a series and the ending is a real cliff hanger. ( )

Some might really like the story, but there were too many times the plot read as if it was tossed together like a bad salad & cheap tricks were used to get our heroine in & out of trouble. Worse, new issues & fixes magically appear/disappear, while parents conveniently do the same. Worst of all, the end is a super cliff hanger, the kind that screams "Read my next book or you're doomed to never know how it turns out." It's a shame. The book had some redeeming features & could have been a good story. It just wasn't constructed or told very well. Some of the trimmings were truly imaginative, but I doubt I'll look to hard for any other books by her. I was hoping this was an early book, but it seems that she's prolific enough that this is a pen name. Her forte seems to be YA novels, so maybe that's why I don't care for this as much. If I run across another, I'll probably read it to see if I like it any better, so she didn't completely turn me off. ( )

Entertaining, with an ending from out of series horror movies. An interesting premise, and protagonist, but nothing much to hang my hat on. Perfect for reading when I'm at less than my best. ( )