Review: Some Girls Bite, by Chloe Neill

Author: Chloe Neill

Title:  Some Girls Bite

Series: Chicagoland Vampires (#1)

ISBN: 9780451226259

Publisher: NAL Trade (April 7^th 2009)

Buy your copy: Paperback | Kindle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“First in a brand new series about a Chicago graduate student's introduction into a society of vampires.

Sure, the life of a graduate student wasn't exactly glamorous, but it was Merit's. She was doing fine until a rogue vampire attacked her. But he only got a sip before he was scared away by another bloodsucker-and this one decided the best way to save her life was to make her the walking undead.

Turns out her savior was the master vampire of Cadogan House. Now she's traded sweating over her thesis for learning to fit in at a Hyde Park mansion full of vamps loyal to Ethan "Lord o' the Manor" Sullivan. Of course, as a tall, green-eyed, four-hundred- year-old vampire, he has centuries' worth of charm, but unfortunately he expects her gratitude- and servitude. But an inconvenient sunlight allergy and Ethan's attitude are the least of her concerns. Someone's still out to get her. Her initiation into Chicago's nightlife may be the first skirmish in a war-and there will be blood.” GoodReads’ blurb

A disclaimer here: I got the audiobooks for this series on impulse. I didn’t know how to spell Cadogan House until I was well into the fourth book... in my mind, it was (and probably will always be) Cardigan House—which wasn’t very glamorous. So, I’m sorry about misspellings and possible typos. Now, on to the actual review:

What a promising start! Vamps are out of the closet, with all the glam and appeal you can imagine, and these ones have all the potential to draw me.

This is going to be a short review for several reasons, the most important being that this book has been around for ages and most of you already know about it... The next most important one being that, me being me, I went and kept reading the series before I reviewed and now I got a jumble of when a book ended and the next began in my head.

Ahem. Let’s try to replicate the feelings I had when I finished listening to this audiobook for the first time, shall we?

Grad student of English Lit turns kick-ass heroine. I liked that. Specially because it didn’t happen overnight: Merit had her work cut out for her, trying to keep up with her new life and new responsibilities. She also had a difficult time adjusting to her vampire existence, and I bought that. Her plans had just crumpled, after all, and while vamp existence is no longer a secret, it’s something fairly new and hard to reconcile with. That said, though, she was a bit whinny... There was a point where I thought “suck it up and keep going already!” Luckily, that’s about the point where Merit herself decides to go the adult thing and accept her position as Cadogan vampire, so... All is well.

There seems to be a love triangle thingy going on. Can’t say much about the deets, because it’d spoil it all (as usual) but I like Morgan. He’s still boyish, even after immortality, and while his way to go about it might not be the best, he’s genuinely interested. The other lead guy, Ethan, had his moments, but he’s just too fixated on political capital and influence games for my taste... We’ll see how this plays out, though, because everything is very tenuous at this point.

The plot itself was interesting. The whole thing is around 9 hours in length; the first 2 were torture to work through without falling asleep but the last 4 went by in a single night. I guess that’s the best way to sum it up: it’s slow to get going, but then it picks up momentum. The evil boss was a bit cliché for my taste, in that the game she played was so obvious that it was insulting she thought it’d work, but at the same time I had the feeling that she had been counting on it failing... and that it was actually part of the plan! So, no complains there.

All in all, a good series for anyone interested in urban fantasy. I’d recommend it!