Halfway to the Grave

 

Title:
Halfway to the Grave

Author: 

Jeaniene Frost

Series: 

Night Huntress

About the Author: (Amazon)

Jeaniene Frost is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of the Night Huntress series, the Night Prince series, the Broken Destiny series, and the Night Rebel series. To date, foreign rights for Jeaniene's novels have sold to twenty different countries. Jeaniene lives in Florida with her husband Matthew, who long ago accepted that she rarely cooks and always sleeps in on the weekends. Aside from writing, Jeaniene enjoys reading, poetry, watching movies, exploring old cemeteries, spelunking, and traveling - by car. Airplanes, children, and cook books frighten her.

Book Summary: (Goodreads) 

Flirting With The Grave…
Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield is going after the undead with a vengeance, hoping that one of these deadbeats is her father – the one responsible for ruining her mother’s life. Then she’s captured by Bones, a vampire bounty hunter, and is forced into an unlikely partnership.

In exchange for help finding her father, Cat agrees to train with the sexy night stalker until her battle reflexes are as sharp as his fangs. She’s amazed she doesn’t end up as his dinner – are there actually good vampires? Pretty soon Bones will have her convinced that being half-dead doesn’t have to be all bad. But before she can enjoy her status as kick-ass demon hunter, Cat and Bones are pursued by a group of killers. Now Cat will have to choose a side … and Bones is turning out to be as tempting as any man with a heartbeat.

Format: Mass market paperback 358 pages

Age level: Adult

Price: $8.99

Link: 

http://www.jeanienefrost.com/books/halfway-to-the-grave/ 

I'd Recommend To: Stay at home moms with a vampire fetish 

My Rating: 3/10 

My Thoughts: 

Honestly, I did not like this book. I did finish it but I won't be reading the other 9 books in the Night Huntress series. I went into the bookstore wanting a vampire book, and while they had tons on werewolves and witches, not many vampire books to choose from. I was happy when I found this one, so I got it; probably should have read a few pages first. 

Cat is a half-vampire, half-human who hunts vampires because she was raised to believe all vampires are evil and deserve to die due to how her father treated her mother. One night, she meets a vampire who is 241 years dead, forever frozen at age 24. She's 22. He also kills vampires, but not all of them because he is one; he's a bounty hunter. He holds her captive for 5 weeks while he trains her to be a better vampire killer. Cue cliche beauty and the beast Stockholm syndrome, she thinks she loves him. There was only like one really descriptive sex chapter, but it was more than enough for me, no thanks. 

So back to Cat's mom and dad. Her dad was a just-turned vampire that raped her mother. The initial way that Bones, the 241 year old vampire, convinces Cat to train with him is that he would help her find her father so she could kill him. However, aside from making this initial agreement THAT'S THE LAST AND ONLY TIME THAT WAS MENTIONED. We learn no new information about her quest to find her father. Yes, a bunch of other adventure stuff with vampire killings happen, but not a peep about finding Cat's dad. Maybe that was done on purpose to get people to read the rest of the books in the series, but to me it was more like click-bait I'm not falling for. I don't need to know that bad; I just think it would have made a better, more interesting story. 

So then what fills the remaining 350 pages if not a search for her father? Well, turns out a big, bad vampire has been basically doing the vampire equivalent of a slave trade so they spend all of their time dealing with that and finding him to stop it, in between having intercourse. And in the end, something happens that's very Marvel/DC movie. I just think overall this plot was not very well thought out, or it's just really, really basic, filled with literacy/movie cliches that just don't fit the vampire fantasy genre. There's a lot of plot holes and jumps and things that don't make sense. I think Frost's editors really let her down and didn't do a good job, but I guess if it's been successful enough to have 10 books in the series maybe I'm in the minority.