Ghost Town (The Morganville Vampires #9) By: Rachel Caine (Book Review)

 ***This review will contain spoilers***

Summary:

Deep in the heart of Texas, Morganville is a small college town full of laid-back students and eccentric townies, not to mention the sort of creatures you wouldn't want to run into after dark. Despite their obvious differences, the human and vampire residents of Morganville have learned to coexist, but that doesn't stop genius student Claire Danvers from keeping up her guard. Because in Morganville, nothing is as it seems...While developing a new system to maintain the town's defenses, Claire discovers a way to use the vampires' powers to help keep outsiders from spreading news of Morganville's "unique" situation once they've crossed the city limits. But the new system has an unexpected and possibly deadly consequence: People inside the town start forgetting who and what they are - even the vampires. And when Claire's boyfriend, Shane, and her best friend, Eve, start treating her like a perfect stranger, Claire realizes she has to figure out a way to pull the plug on her experiment - before she forgets how to save herself... and Morganville.

Another great book staring our Morganville heroes! I love how unique Caine has been with this series and the series is not just dragging on. It's a continual progression and each book either brings in new elements or expands more on the town of Morganville and it's residents. 

Claire never ceases to amaze me. I love how her character just keeps on growing and maturing. She has become a fierce key figure in the world of Morganville without being 'all powerful'. I've always had an issue where the protagonist over time becomes over powered and there's no one to defeat her. Now, I'm not saying that is necessarily bad if it's written correctly but the problem is that they are very rarely written correctly. Even though Claire is human, her mind and intelligence rivals vampires. Which is something to look at closely. It's doesn't matter how 'big' or 'strong' you are physically because most of the time if you aren't using your intelligence and wit in dire situations then you're pretty much going to fail. And Claire always thinks things through. It might take her a hot second to get it but she eventually does, sometimes even before the big bad vampires of Morganville. 

We find out from Amelie that Claire was meant to replace Myrnin as the person in charge of Morganville's safety and keeping the perimeter active and working. Amelie and pretty much anyone who has met Myrnin knew that he's not all there in his head. He's close to snapping and never recovering from it. He did snap and altered the machine that was in control of the border that alters memories whenever someone leaves Morganville but instead it was affecting everyone in Morganville to make them believe they were themselves but three years prior. Needless to say, Morganville goes to shit pretty quickly. But our resident brainiac Claire was the first to figure out what was wrong. Unfortunately, just when she goes to warn Amelie, Oliver orchestrated a coop to take control of Morganville and get out of Amelie's thumb. What was so shocking was Yvette's skanky ass coming back in the fold to be at Oliver's side but she didn't last long because she staked Amelie the first chance she got. Oliver protecting Amelie and trying to nurse her back to health makes me feel like those two had some sort of fling in the past because it doesn't make sense how they keep tolerating each other and giving chance after chance when they clearly both want to be in control. 

Oliver's little stint didn't last long because when Amelie was effected with memory loss, she quickly attacked him and regained control of Morganville. She isn't known as the ice queen for nothing. It's nice to see the before and after of how Amelie was. We really don't know much about her but I think a lot of people; vampires included, forgot just how ruthless she can be. She clearly worked very hard to evolve and try to be as fair as possible while ruling over Morganville. I am extremely curious to know just how old some of the vampire residents are. There's been insinuations that some are thousands of years old but no definitive answer thus far. I would be really curious to know how old Amelie truly is and how they played a part throughout history. 

The finale to this book had me stressing out! A small group; including the local scooby gang with a lot of memories missing between them banded together to turn off the machine at any means necessary. I loved that Caine included Claire losing her memories and how that looked from her perspective step by step. That was so well written that it made me read so much faster. Frank Collins; Shane's dad committed the ultimate sacrifice and blew the machine up thus saving everyone in Morganville. It hurt Shane terribly because he thought his dad was a real piece of work and a son of a bitch but Frank died saving his son. How terrible could he be if he did the ultimate sacrifice? Needless to say, the tears were flowing but by the last page of the book I was screaming 'What the fuck!!??' when Myrnin reveals to Claire that he used Frank Collins brain to rebuild the machine thus Frank taking the place of what Ada used to be able to do. 

Rating:

5 stars on 5! I love the series and it is only getting better and better. I hope that the series does end on a high and not being dragged out. So far, it's been amazing and I can't wait to keep reading on to find out what happens next!