House Rules

House Rules (Chicagoland Vampires, #7)by Chloe Neill

In a city full of vampires, trouble never sleeps.At the tender age of 27, Merit became a sword-wielding vampire. Since then, she’s become the protector of her House, watched Chicago nearly burn to the ground, and seen her Master fall and rise. Now she’ll see her mettle—and her metal —tested like never before.It started with two . . . Two rogues vanishing without a trace. Someone is targeting Chicago’s vampires, and anyone could be next. With their house in peril, Merit and her Master, the centuries old Ethan Sullivan, must race to stop the disappearances. But as they untangle a web of secret alliances and ancient evils, they realize their foe is more familiar, and more powerful, than they could have ever imagined. (goodreads.com)

You know what I am going to start with? I'm going to start with the cover. I mean, look at this cover. You might not notice much by just looking at the tiny image on my blog, but in real life this cover is just abysmal. The photo of the cover model is so horrible, it's like someone made an Awkward Photo mock up cover as a joke and it accidentally got printed. The entire photo is just completely lacklustre. I know the UK covers for this series are sort of cheesy, what with the glowing cover model, but I kind of like them. This one is just so bland and embarrassing. Nothing about this photo says "Strong, sassy, Sentinel Vampire".*ahem*And now on to what I thought of the story between the cover...There are two stories going on in this book. One story about random killings of vampires and another about Cadogan House's detachment from the, um, Grand, um... GP... the, you know, group of Vampires that keep everyone together. Wow. It's been a while since I read the book and I can't think of the name of the  governance body. Oops.I was more interested in the random vampire killings than I was about Merit's double life of being a Cadogan vampire and a member of the Red Guard and the politics of vampires pissing off other vampires. I do think that Cadogan house becoming rogue vampires was a pretty neat move to keep the story interesting, but I like how these books normally have some mystery to them and that wasn't it. The mystery was the killing of rogue vamps and I felt like there was a whole lot of space between introducing that element of the story and then finally getting back to it.I also found that the resolution to that mystery happened way too fast and sort of as if it was just tossed in there as an afterthought because there was a completely different story going on at the same time.I didn't exactly dislike this instalment of the Chicagoland Vampires series, but I didn't love it, either. I did find it more enjoyable than the last book, but nothing beats the WOWZA! that was Hard Bitten. I feel like I am comparing each new book in this series to that one.Regardless of my preference for which of the stories took the lead in this book, I am pretty sure that Cadogan House being rogue (in a way) is a huge turn for this series. I am very eager to see where the next two books take me because I am sure I'm in for some delightful supernatural shenanigans in the future!Chicagoland Vampire series

1. Some Girls Bite
2. Friday Night Bites
3. Twice Bitten
4. Hard Bitten
5. Drink Deep
6. Biting Cold
7. House Rules
8. Biting Bad  - August 2013
9. Wild Things - 2014