Get Up Offa That Slump: A Blogging Extravaganza - Review of My Favorite Book Ever

Hello, all! Welcome to DAY  FOUR of Get Up Offa That Slump: A Blogging Extravaganza! (Please take a moment to stretch.) This extravaganza is a three-week long partay consisting of blog posts that will hopefully do a number of things: get you back into blogging and remind you how fun and creative blogging can be. To learn more about this shindig (all the cool kids are doing it, just an FYI), you can check out the introduction post here and join in anytime!

Now, for today's festivities:

Here's the prompt: I know I said this extravaganza wasn't about reviews, but this is a little different. This is your favorite book in the history ofever. This entire review would be incoherent spewing coming from your heart because you love this book. You're not even really reviewing it. You are writing a love poem, a sonnet for this book, and possibly buying it an engagement ring and lots of chocolate (but keep it away from the pages!).

OR, you can do Don't Post That Venting Review/Bash That Book: Have you ever heard of it being therapeutic to write a nasty, venting email to someone who's bothering you, but without actually sending the email? Then this post is for you. Maybe you hated a book, or you loved a book or series but one thing in it just pissed you off. Write a "review"--or unfiltered letter or whatever--to that book--but remember, you're not supposed to send it--but you're going to post it. Your challenge: to write your book bash without naming the book or any parts of the book that would obviously give away what that book is.

When I put together Get Up Offa That Slump and was coming up with prompt ideas, I think I was planning on "bashing" a book, writing that "email" but not sending it. But then I got to thinking about reviewing my favorite book ever--a love letter, really--and how that could really turn into a feature with multiple, somewhat constant posts. It could be considered a review, but yet it isn't? It's me purely telling you why you should read a book--it's book pushing--and I love that.

If we're getting technical, my favorite series is Twilight, but everyone already knows about those books and telling you about them wouldn't be doing much. I also love The Hunger Games and Throne of Glass (my most favorite books are series because I can't pick one and because series put me in a world longer), but again...people pretty much know about those.

And then there's Morganville.

Welcome to Morganville. You'll never want to leave.

There are books. There are books and there are series and there are short stories and novellas and fanart and foreign editions and fanfiction and a serious lack of shelf space and digits in your bank account.

But every once in awhile there are books that are special. I can love a book, I can give it five stars, but that doesn't mean it will hit The Spot. Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires series doesn't just hit The Spot; it takes me home.

I don't know precisely what it is about this series that makes it feel like home. I can be honest when I say that it's not perfect: it has its consistencies and there are a few plot lines that make me want to frown and it's what I'd call, in a sense, a simpler series.

This is a series I started after reading the first three Twilight books and was waiting for Breaking Dawn and obsessively checking Stephenie Meyer's website for new quotes. I wanted to read more books, and I definitely had an interest in vampires. This was also during the days of MySpace, and someone I had gone to school with posted a list of her favorite books on her page, and that's where I saw Glass Houses.

Enter Morganville, Texas: A town in the Middle of Nowhere that doesn't have much of anything spectacular to it...except that oh, yeah, vampires and humans live there together and the vamps are the bosses. But that's only part of it.

Here's the deal. I could look out the window at the sidewalk outside my house right now (well, not right now; it's not safest to go outside in Morganville when it's dark) and picture four people standing there: Michael Glass, Eve Rosser, Shane Collins, and Claire Danvers. It's like they're real and really, truly there. They'll do things in the books--sixteen total, if you include the recent short story collection Midnight Bites--and I can nod along and smile and think That's totally something Shane would do, or Yep, Eve would definitely say that to a vampire, or Oh, Myrnin, only you. I know these characters. They're familiar and I'm comfortable with them and it's like we've known each other forever. 

The characters are real, whether they drink blood or coffee. I fall for every story and can flip through the books and reread my favorite parts--every book has at least one scene that's extremely worthy of a reread. (And my gosh, I'm in desperate need of a series reread.) I love this series so much that I started buying everything by Rachel Caine and I currently have over thirty books with her name on them and many, many more to buy. (And if she ever came here for a signing I would fangirl SO HARD and maybe cry and freak out it in general.)

These aren't just books. This isn't just a very long series. These aren't vampire books. This is a series that I never, ever want to end. This is a world full of characters I love, stories I worship, and a nuclear combination of thrills and suspense and comedy and drama and romance and friendship and family and love and danger and blood and death and life and monsters and adventure and the best comebacks. 

I will never say goodbye to the Founder-you-don't-mess-with Amelie; tye-dye shirt-wearing, coffee-making Oliver; vampire-bunny-slipper-wearing, mad scientist Myrnin and his pet spider named Bob. 

I will never say goodbye to Michael Glass, the musician with the potential to rock the world and a penchant for blood; Eve Rosser, everyone's favorite fierce and cheery Goth in a town full of vampires; Shane Collins, the troubled boy with family issues and a fragile heart and tendency to be swoony; and Claire Danvers, the girl who went to college at Texas Prairie University early without realizing the fang-filled life she was tumbling into--and the effect she would have on it, and it on her.

Rachel Caine said it best when she returned to Morganville in Midnight Bites:

Because, as you know, once you're a Morganville resident...you'll never want to leave.

Welcome to my home.

To learn more about the Morganville Vampires, you can add the first book on Goodreads or check out Rachel Caine's website. You can also take a look at the web series, which I love because it's Morganville, but pleaseee don't let that be the judge of whether or not you read the books (and that's not how I picture the characters, so.)

Did you write a love letter to a book today? Or did you bash a book? Be sure to link up!