Some Girls Bite

Some Girls Bite by Chloe Neill

A Chicagoland Vampires Novel

ISBN# 978-0-451-22625-9

Available now

Published by New American Library (NAL)

Format: trade pbk., 341 pages

Genres: fiction, urban fantasy

Some Girls Bite is the first book in the Chicagoland Vampires series. What sets this book, and potentially the series, apart from the tons of other vampire series currently saturating the market is the setting. We're taken to Chicago, which isn't all that special, but it's also Chicago only a few months after vampires came out to the public. In most urban fantasy vampires have either been out of the closet for a few years and are pretty well established or they're still secretly living among us, so Neill's timeline is kind of refreshing. The second book, Friday Night Bites, will be out in October. Firespell, the first book in a second series is due to come out in January of 2010.

Eight months ago the Chicagoland vampires announced their existence to the humans by publishing a letter in the Sun-Times and the Trib. Then, they became the public face for vampires everywhere by holding press conferences and taking part in nationally televised Congressional investigations. Merit, a 27 year old grad student who'd finally found her way clear of her parents incessant social climbing, thought the vampires were even worse than high society. When she's made one, without her consent, after a vicious attack to save her life everything else around her begins to change too. Her grandfather, the only family member that's ever loved her just as she is, ends up knowing more about supernaturals than he's ever let on before. Mallory, her roommate who's always been into the paranormal and occult, is told she has magical talent and will need training. Merit's major stumbling block to accepting her vampirism and her role in Cadogan House, one of three vampire Houses in Chicago, is the feudal system they adhere to. While learning to accept her new lot in life she finds out she's not the only young brunette to be attacked, just the only one lucky enough to have a Master vampire near enough to save her. This rogue, which the public doesn't even know exists, is leaving evidence at his crime scenes implicating two of the three Houses so far. Now the hunt is on because if he isn't caught soon the vampires fear that they will once again end up at the not so tender mercy of blind human paranoia.

I really enjoyed this book despite there being so many vampire series out there right now. Some authors seem to think that if you're going to have a stubborn heroine she has to be bull-headed about absolutely everything, but that gets the story nowhere fast and the reader very frustrated. Merit is stubborn for all the right reasons, but even while being stubborn she's still taking everything into consideration and weighing her options. The struggle she has with accepting the vampires' feudal system is the same struggle any modern day American would have I think. I find Merit's underlying sense of grief, from which all her problems about being a vampire flow, very understandable and believable. Unlike the other 11 initiates to Cadogan House she never consented to being turned, she wasn't prepared and before the attack she never wanted anything to do with vampires. I really have nothing bad to say about this book because I can see a lot of myself in Merit's thinking and decision making processes which drew me right in. Highly recommended for urban fantasy fans, especially those with a love for vampires.

Zhye