Carpe Corpus (The Morganville Vampires Bk6) - Rachel Caine

Carpe Corpus is the 6th book in The Morganville Vampire series by Rachel Caine.

Here's what has happened so far
Claire Danvers moved to Morganville to go to college early at 16. After being bullied in the dorms by Monica and her popular friends, Claire moved into Glass House with Michael, Shane and Eve, where she soon discovered that Morganville was ran by vampires. Michael was a ghost and now he's a vampire, Shane is Claire's boyfriend and Eve is her best friend. Shane's crazy Dad turned up and tried to take out the vampires. Claire had to sign herself over to Amelie to ensure protection for her and her friends which resulted in working for Myrnin, a crazy, sick vampire. Then, Mr Bishop, Amelie's father turned up and decided to take over the town and rule it for himself. Right at the end of book 5, Lord of Misrule, Claire decided to join forces with Bishop.

Carpe Corpus
After deciding to work with Bishop to save her friends, Claire Danvers realises that she doesn't exactly have any friends left. Eve refuses to talk to her, Shane has been thrown in jail with his insane Dad and Michael is also working with the bad vamps. Claire thought that Amelie would be the one to save her but she is no where to be found and acting like a coward.

Bishop wants everyone to do exactly what he says and doesn't care who dies in the meantime. Claire is stuck in the middle of a full scale war between Amelie and Bishop by working for one and being sworn to the other. Someone is going to have to take Bishop down for good but Claire and her friends are going to have to be extremely sneaky and rely on some people that they would never have trusted before to make sure that they get their town back.

What I thought
I'm really beginning to feel sorry for Claire. There's only so much a teenage girl can take but after swearing herself to Amelie, Claire doesn't have a way out of Morganville anymore. It's beginning to look as though she's destined for a life of danger and action or to end up dying young (which we all know wont happen really). This is the first book in the series that sees Claire completely alone, without her friends to rely on. Shane is her backbone a lot of the time and knowing he's there makes her stronger and braver but with him in prison, Claire has a really hard time coping with what is happening and I ended up just wanting to give her a big hug and tell her it would all be ok.

So many characters in this book reveal what they are really like and in terms of character development, this is what I had been waiting for. Claire turns 17 on the first page so for anyone who has read the rest of the series, I knew where the story was about to go at some point. 5 books of sexual tension was enough for me so I was looking forward to seeing Claire and Shane's relationship develop even more and to see how they dealt with what was going to happen. Other characters have a lot of depth this time around and most of them are ones that you never would have guessed. The past between Amelie, Sam and Myrnin are expanded upon and considering that they are such a big part of the story now, this was something that I truly enjoyed reading about. It really gave their characters a whole new meaning in my eyes.

What I really like about these books is that each one starts off from where the last left off. I really hate to have a big chunk of time missing from a continuing plot and Rachel Caine doesn't leave anything out in these books. From page 1, I was thrown right back into Morganville according to Bishop and following Claire as she tried to figure out what to do. Along the way, there are many twists and turns that kept me guessing about what was really happening but also, aspects of previous books were brought back in to tie up some unanswered questions. I had honestly forgotten about some of these parts but when the events happened I was like 'Oooooh! I get it now' so that was a really good aspect for me. Where Lord of Misrule had a lot of action, some of that was replaced by mystery and plotting in this book. I like the action but it can be overdone so it was nice to have a change of pace for Carpe Corpus.

Instead of a heartbreaking or jaw dropping cliff-hanger, this time the ending was very well rounded. Even though it wasn't extremely exciting like in previous books, the end still made me want to pick up book 7 immediately. It was nice to see Rachel Caine mix things up a bit this time around and give the readers an ending that they couldn't have been expecting.

How lucky I am to live in the UK. Our version of Carpe Corpus has an exclusive short story at the back of the book which is written from Shane's point of view. In the first two books in this series we got to read from Eve's diary and this was another addition that I really enjoyed. These little extras make it a lot easier to connect with and relate to characters which aren't Claire and Shane's short story made me fall in love with him all over again. He's such a sweetheart really.

Rachel Caine certainly knows her audience and how to keep them happy. Carpe Corpus was one of my favourites in the series and I couldn't wait to start on Fade Out.