Saturday 5 June 2010

Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress #1) by Jeaniene Frost


Title: Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress #1)
Author: Jeaniene Frost
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Urban fantasy, paranormal, romance
Description: (From Goodreads) 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 unholy partnership.

In exchange for 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 new found 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.

~*~

This is the first book in the “Night Huntress” series by Jeaniene Frost and it introduces our protagonist, Cat Crawfield. She’s half-human/half-vampire and her lineage is the result of her mother being raped by a vampire when she was a teenager. Cat grew up knowing that she was different from other kids, but not until she was in her mid-teens did her mother tell her about her parentage and why she’s stronger and faster and has better vision than any other kids her age.

After having her heart broken by a boy who slept with her once and then ditched her, Cat started hunting vampires. One night while out looking for a prospective victim, she meets a mysterious vampire who turns out to be the highly lauded Bones. He abducts her thinking that she’d been sent by one of his enemies to lure him into a trap and, once he realizes she’s not working for any of the vampires he’s after, he decides to train her to be his sidekick. Essentially, the plan is that she’ll be used as bait to lure in the vampires and once she has them alone, Bones will sweep in to get any information he needs and do the killing. Since Cat tends to act first and ask questions later, things rarely go according to plan; however, despite the fact that Cat has a habit of prematurely killing the vampires Bones needs to interrogate, somehow things usually work out. With Bones’s help, Cat becomes a hardcore assassin and their romance blooms as they hunt down vampire baddies.

I’m not a big fan of first-person POV, but I liked it in this case. I thought Cat had a snarky, funny voice and some of the scenes had me laughing out loud. While I did like Cat, one her biggest flaws was that she could be extremely close-minded and judgmental about certain things. In a way, you can’t really blame her - she was raised by a bitter woman who taught her that all vampires were evil and she’d never seen anything to the contrary until she met Bones - but some of the things she said and did really annoyed me. Other than that, I didn’t have any complaints about her and, like nearly everyone who’s read this series, I absolutely loved Bones. His dialogue was great and I liked the fact that he wasn’t the usual, emotionally closed-off type of hero. He wasn’t afraid to show his sensitive side and I appreciated that. I adore cold, dangerous heroes as much as the next girl, but I thought Bones was a refreshing change from the norm.

The plot wasn’t anything new or ground-breaking, but Frost has a good writing style and it all seems to boil down to the characters. No matter what is going on in the background, I want to read more about Cat and Bones. I’ll definitely be continuing on with the series. As a warning, though, this book is labeled “paranormal romance,” but it reads more like urban fantasy right up to the very end. Some people might not like this since not everything is wrapped up with a nice pink bow and our couple riding off into the sunset, but you should keep in mind that this is a series and so the ending is actually more of a “to be continued” than a true finale.

Content Description

Sex and nudity - Several sex scenes. Rape is mentioned multiple times.
Violence and gore - Moderate to heavy. Not as bad as it could have been, but worse than a lot of other books I’ve read. There is a lot of blood and death and some gory moments.
Alcohol and drugs - The main character drinks fairly often. She doesn’t intentionally consume any kind of drugs, but a couple of guys do slip a “roofie” into her drink during a club/bar scene.
Profanity - Heavy.
Frightening/intense scenes - As stated above, there is a lot of violence. The heroine is wounded pretty often and she has to drink vampire blood on more than one occasion. The fight scenes and descriptions of killing might be disturbing to some readers.

1 comment:

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