Fade Out: The Morganville Vampires- Book Seven by Rachel Caine

Bishop is finally defeated, and the residents of Morganville are finally getting back to normal. Claire is out of Glass house and living with her parents, but at least she and Shane are still together. Claire has also reconnected with her roommates, especially her best friend, Eve. But when Claire is opening packages for her mentor, vampire Myrnin, one of them explodes, leaving her with burns that make her very, very red from a UV Bomb. Thank goodness it was Claire opening the package, as that much UV would have killed Myrnin.

But the sacrifice at the end of the last book has left its scars on Amelie, and when Claire's bracelet suddenly turns very, very cold, the friends must race to the rescue of Amelie before she can die. Has the defeat of Bishop put an end to Amelie as well?

Meanwhile, Eve has scored the lead in the campus play version of "A Streetcar Named Desire". Working on the play, she meets another Goth girl, Kim, and suddenly Claire feels left out in the cold as Eve and Kim become sudden BFFs and leave Claire and the others out in the cold. Except for Shane, who seems to have had a former relationship with Shane and seems to want to take up right where they left off. She pursues Shane so avidly, and seems to have nothing but contempt for Claire that Claire ends up feeling very unhappy about how Kim seems to be taking her friend and boyfriend away from her.

But when Kim suddenly disappears, they find out that she was an independent filmmaker, and she planned to make a show about vampires. Specifically, the Morganville Vampires, and the amount of footage she has of stuff that should be private and secret is both amazing and worrying. But how could she have planted cameras in all the places where her footage was taken, some of which are off limits to humans, and some of which is off-limits to vampires? And who was the mysterious person she was working with to make her film series? And when other people around town begin disappearing as well, can Claire discover what is wrong and put an end to the threat to the town. But will ending the threat, prove a greater threat to the town from unforseen consequences?

And Michael has made quite a name for himself as a musician and singer in town, and now he's attracting attention for his talent from outside Morganville, and he's gotten an offer from a record company executive to come and see about possibly recording an album for them. But will he be allowed to travel outside Morganville to take on the offer? And if they are allowed to travel, will Claire and her friends be able to return afterwards?

Wow, this was an amazing book. Once again, Claire has gotten a way to deal with her former nemesis, Monica Morell, but now a new threat to the life she's built for herself in Morganville has reared its ugly head, and we see that despite everything she's gone through, she's still not good with being able to deal well with rejection from the people she sees as her friends. But is everything as under threat as Claire feels it to be?

There certainly is a threat to the town, but while Kim is doing most of the work, who is backing her? And how can this person give her access to so many places. Even while I knew this character was causing trouble before, I didn't suspect them of being behind all the problems in this book, so the ending was a real surprise to me, and then all the pieces fell into place from the entire book.

I found this book to be a welcome change of pace from the other Morganville Vampires books, and yet, it's also a welcome change back to the original two books. We continue to find out more about life in Morganville, and life there continues to change. Some of those changes are going to be unwelcome, while others, well, that remains to be seen. Still, I continue to love this series and this book was a big part of that. Highly recommended.