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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
Great story intresting characters and alot of action and enjoyed it the more i read. Great book really recomend
Full Review posted at A Book Lovin' Mama's Blog
I enjoyed the first book in the series since it introduced Bones and Cat, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next with these two, especially with how everything ended.
Steaminess: YES!!! Very Steamy!
Cliffhanger: Yes. At least there is to me since I need to read the next book to find out what happens to Bones and Cat. Cat ends up working for a government agency and running away from Bones, so yes, I consider this a cliffhanger.
Standalone or Series? This is a series, so I recommend reading in order.
Do I recommend this book? Yes, definitely. If you are a fan of Urban Fantasy with Vampires and Ghouls, then this book is for you. I still cannot believe it took me this long to read the first book. Thank goodness for the #Romanceopoly2020 Challenge for having me read this book finally. It fulfilled the Burger Joint square on the Romanceopoly board.
I enjoyed the first book in the series since it introduced Bones and Cat, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next with these two, especially with how everything ended.
Steaminess: YES!!! Very Steamy!
Cliffhanger: Yes. At least there is to me since I need to read the next book to find out what happens to Bones and Cat. Cat ends up working for a government agency and running away from Bones, so yes, I consider this a cliffhanger.
Standalone or Series? This is a series, so I recommend reading in order.
Do I recommend this book? Yes, definitely. If you are a fan of Urban Fantasy with Vampires and Ghouls, then this book is for you. I still cannot believe it took me this long to read the first book. Thank goodness for the #Romanceopoly2020 Challenge for having me read this book finally. It fulfilled the Burger Joint square on the Romanceopoly board.
I’m surprised I didn’t like this book more. It was written in a familiar informal/casual style that I love, the main characters were interesting, and the plot was slightly more fleshed out than some other PNR books that give very little attention to plot and focus more on hot guys, brooding attitudes, mysterious pasts, and Kama Sutra. There was just something missing and I can’t quite put my finger on it or distill it into one missing piece, so I’m going to ramble it out here and see if it comes to me. (WARNING: SPOILERS SPREAD THROUGHOUT WITH TAGS)
MAIN CHARACTERS:
As far as lead female badasses in PNR books go, Cat is one of the better ones. I saw her very clearly in my head and envisioned her as sort of a mash up of Sookie Stackhouse/Arya Stark/Bridget Jones/The Bride from Kill Bill/Buffy, and overall, I really liked her. She was strong and fierce with an interesting background, witty and stubborn, and I liked that she has this aversion to/fear of saying the “L” word because I can relate to that. Her full name is just ridiculous though. Catherine Kathleen Crawfield? Cathy Kathy Crawfield, basically. I don’t know why this bugged me as much as it did. SPOILER: And how did Cat manage to cover up who and what she is for so long if everything takes off at lightspeed once she meets Bones? The whole Stephanie situation seemed kind of far-fetched to me considering Cat went 22 years without any such issues, despite the fact that she’s sought out vampires to kill since she was 16. How were they all young and therefore easily defeated vampires too? It’s just too easy.
I know this book was most likely written for Buffy fans, and being one myself, I thought I’d get a real kick out of it and have a post-Buffy itch scratched. I think Cat does do Buffy justice in a way, but it was fluffy justice. Cat was great, but the other issues battled with her for my attention. I know Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn’t in the same league as True Blood when you’re judging overall quality in vampire shows, and Buffy is a fluffy show (at least in the beginning), but Buffy was an important female hero when the show came out. I guess I just thought we’d get an updated version of her in this story? I don’t know if I’m accurately relaying my feelings and thoughts, so I might come back to this review after another day of mulling it over and add on to this part.
I do know that my main problem with Cat as a character is that I just didn’t like how she was with her family, and I’ll go into that more later.
SPOILER: A random thing I didn’t like and couldn’t understand: there’s one scene where Cat is trying to pretend she’s a prostitute to infiltrate a place and she takes off both her shirt and bra in the car before she gets to the entrance where she will be introduced. Why? Why not just take off your shirt? I get that she was in her “fighting clothes” or whatever, but leaving your bra on would have been fine. I just didn’t get this, especially from some girl who was basically an innocent, shy virginal type until a few months ago. You don’t really go from “blushing when someone says an innuendo and seeing one penis briefly” to “here are my breasts, world and enemy rapists!” after a few good romps in the sheets with one guy. Or am I wrong?
Bones is great, and I think he’s why everyone loves this book. I get it. He’s not your typical Alpha-male asshole that plays games and has emotional hang-ups. It’s a nice change for the PNR genre. I don’t really have anything negative to say about his character unless you count “almost too perfect” as a complaint. Oh! Maybe his physical appearance. I know he’s modeled after Spike from Buffy, so the whole almost-black eyes and almost-white hair and almost-cavernous cheekbones and almost-translucent pale skin thing was for Spike swooners, but it didn’t do it for me. I completely ignored any physical descriptions of Bones and made up my own picture of him in my head.
SIDE CHARACTERS:
The main villain was entertaining to a certain extent, but I think maybe that had something to do with my feeling of “something missing” from this book. We learn most of what we know about him second-hand, and although he sounds like a truly despicable creature, I wished we knew more about him and I wish he was in the story more. I’ll go into that more in this spoiler, but if you haven’t read the book, beware. It’s a big ending spoiler. SPOILER: He’s killed in a quick and rather anticlimactic way to me, which is funny because the scene itself is supposed to be an action packed all-out-crazy shit-is-going-down type of situation. Then we meet this other new big-shot villain almost immediately after and his demise is even quicker. I really assumed the book would end with Hennessey’s death and the next book would go into his partner, the big human villain working with him. But no, he was killed right after. It all seemed too easy. The last 20 or so pages after that also felt rushed. We’re introduced to a new plot with a Men in Black vibe that was slightly hinted at in a joking manner by an insignificant character early on, but it just wasn’t enough.
Don’t even get me started on Cat’s bitch-ass mother. JESUS CHRIST. Get a life, lady. She is filled with so much poison and ignorance I’m amazed she managed to keep Cat alive for so long, and also surprised she didn’t smother Cat in her crib to “save” Cat from turning into her evil monster self that is apparently an inevitability. She doomed Cat in her mind the day Cat was born and I honestly don’t believe that woman is capable of love. She sends her daughter out to her possible death every single weekend since Cat was 16. That is not love. I honestly don’t know what that is and I can’t come up with any excuses for her. Frost kind of gives us a reason, but that reason just makes me more angry at Cat's mom. There are moments (one big one towards the end and one big one from her past that we’re constantly reminded of throughout the story) when we’re supposed to feel sorry for her, but I just did not care because I seriously hate that woman. I hated her from her first introduction in the book, and my hatred only grew. I wanted her to be killed off, not just because she’s a POS, but also because she wasn’t furthering the plot (at least for me) and was more of a fly in my ear nuisance. Same with Cat's idiot grandparents. Infuriating. I know not everyone is like me, but if that were my mom and grandparents, I wouldn’t have spent anytime trying to comfort or coddle those close-minded, control-freak, nosy-britches, lazy, selfish, Bible-thumping, backwoods Ohio hillbillies. I don’t care if it would make me virtually alone in the world without family. They’re toxic and it’s amazing Cat wasn’t able to see that. I feel like there’s a lot missing from the story of Cat’s mom, or maybe I just really hope there is. (Sorry for all the "Cat's mom" stuff. I know Frost gives us her name when she's introduced to Timmie, I just can't remember what it is. Starts with a "J" I think. I guess I could go back and change all of them to "Ms. Crawfield" but whatever).
SPOILER:I kept thinking we would get some big reveal that Cat’s mom was actually a half-vampire half-human too, or not even her real mother, but we got nothing. Apparently there’s no mystery to this woman and what we see is what we get. I guess that means she’s just a crazy toxic bitch, a flat character with zero room for growth? I could go on and on about Cat's family, but I’ll stop there. I know we're not supposed to like them, my emotions just went beyond "disliking" them. If you couldn't tell.
LESSER SIDE CHARACTERS:
I also felt zero sympathy for Francesca. I was in no way concerned for her at any time. SPOILER:If you see that a guy and a girl are CLEARLY involved and you still make a point to flash your flower and everything else while shamelessly mounting a seduction campaign on the guy in front of his girl, you have issues. I can’t be expected to feel sorry for her because she’s in a shitty situation. Like Cat’s mom, I just didn’t care and I wanted her to be killed off. I also wanted Bones to shut that down, and his responses to her extremely inappropriate advances just made me more angry. I don’t care if it’s a “vampire thing” and Frost never stated that it was anyway. I’m just used to books about vampires explaining away such behavior that way and I assume we’re supposed to think that’s what was happening and accept that excuse. “Oh, we’re all just such sexual beings, we don’t know what the word ‘boundaries’ mean and we have no respect for monogamy.” Sorry, that’s an issue I can’t get past. You can’t expect me to feel for a character like that and believe you when you tell me she’s one of the good guys.
I wanted more Charles, more Ian, more Switch, more Winston, and less Timmie (or more Timmie? I just couldn’t figure out how I felt about him, so either more or less). I know there’s only so much you can fit into a first book in the series, and 364 pages is about the right amount, but I think Frost could have ended the story after the scene at Hennessey’s and given us more depth on the other characters and the world. Since the ending is super rushed, it felt like we went from 0-60 and I was holding on for dear life trying to fill in the blanks we were passing.
WORLD-BUILDING STUFF:
This world has vampires, ghouls, ghosts, and a half-vampire half-human. The world-building is decent, and we learn about the hierarchy of vampires (Masters, for example), but everything felt like it could have been explored more and taken deeper. I was hoping we’d get another chapter of Winston, or more info on ghouls, really just more of everything. (The sex scenes are also watered down after the first one. We just get hints of them, to let us know sex was had before the scene cuts. Again, anticlimactic.) As for the setting, I liked that the characters left Ohio occasionally, but I didn’t really ever feel like we really left Ohio, if that makes sense. From one crappy small-town to the next, the scenes were somehow very similar no matter what town we were in.
(Random note: this might be nothing, but at one point the Bennington Triangle is mentioned and it’s stated as having taken place in Maine, and when I googled it to see if it was real, it is. It just says it took place in Vermont, not Maine. Was this a purposeful change or was that really a mistake? How could you mistake the state if you had to do research on it for this book? I could be misunderstanding something, and it wasn’t a big deal anyway, just a small head-tilt fact that I wanted to mention.)
PLOT: 3.5 stars, CHARACTERS: 3.5 stars, SEXINESS: 3 stars, WRITING STYLE: 4 stars, WORLD: 3 stars.
I’ve heard this series gets better, so I’m going to stick with it and see where it goes. I might take a break after this one though, read something in between this and the second book to cleanse my pallet and give me time to flesh out my feelings about it. I enjoyed reading Halfway to the Grave, it just wasn’t as good as I thought it would be and I can’t stop feeling like something major was missing. As far as PNR books go, it’s definitely not in the absolute trash cliché with a half-assed plot meant only to fill in the pages around the sex scenes folder, but it wasn’t in the best-of-PNR folder with the Fever series by Moning either. This was a light read that could’ve used a lot more depth.
MAIN CHARACTERS:
As far as lead female badasses in PNR books go, Cat is one of the better ones. I saw her very clearly in my head and envisioned her as sort of a mash up of Sookie Stackhouse/Arya Stark/Bridget Jones/The Bride from Kill Bill/Buffy, and overall, I really liked her. She was strong and fierce with an interesting background, witty and stubborn, and I liked that she has this aversion to/fear of saying the “L” word because I can relate to that. Her full name is just ridiculous though. Catherine Kathleen Crawfield? Cathy Kathy Crawfield, basically. I don’t know why this bugged me as much as it did. SPOILER:
I know this book was most likely written for Buffy fans, and being one myself, I thought I’d get a real kick out of it and have a post-Buffy itch scratched. I think Cat does do Buffy justice in a way, but it was fluffy justice. Cat was great, but the other issues battled with her for my attention. I know Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn’t in the same league as True Blood when you’re judging overall quality in vampire shows, and Buffy is a fluffy show (at least in the beginning), but Buffy was an important female hero when the show came out. I guess I just thought we’d get an updated version of her in this story? I don’t know if I’m accurately relaying my feelings and thoughts, so I might come back to this review after another day of mulling it over and add on to this part.
I do know that my main problem with Cat as a character is that I just didn’t like how she was with her family, and I’ll go into that more later.
SPOILER:
Bones is great, and I think he’s why everyone loves this book. I get it. He’s not your typical Alpha-male asshole that plays games and has emotional hang-ups. It’s a nice change for the PNR genre. I don’t really have anything negative to say about his character unless you count “almost too perfect” as a complaint. Oh! Maybe his physical appearance. I know he’s modeled after Spike from Buffy, so the whole almost-black eyes and almost-white hair and almost-cavernous cheekbones and almost-translucent pale skin thing was for Spike swooners, but it didn’t do it for me. I completely ignored any physical descriptions of Bones and made up my own picture of him in my head.
SIDE CHARACTERS:
The main villain was entertaining to a certain extent, but I think maybe that had something to do with my feeling of “something missing” from this book. We learn most of what we know about him second-hand, and although he sounds like a truly despicable creature, I wished we knew more about him and I wish he was in the story more. I’ll go into that more in this spoiler, but if you haven’t read the book, beware. It’s a big ending spoiler. SPOILER:
Don’t even get me started on Cat’s bitch-ass mother. JESUS CHRIST. Get a life, lady. She is filled with so much poison and ignorance I’m amazed she managed to keep Cat alive for so long, and also surprised she didn’t smother Cat in her crib to “save” Cat from turning into her evil monster self that is apparently an inevitability. She doomed Cat in her mind the day Cat was born and I honestly don’t believe that woman is capable of love. She sends her daughter out to her possible death every single weekend since Cat was 16. That is not love. I honestly don’t know what that is and I can’t come up with any excuses for her. Frost kind of gives us a reason, but that reason just makes me more angry at Cat's mom. There are moments (one big one towards the end and one big one from her past that we’re constantly reminded of throughout the story) when we’re supposed to feel sorry for her, but I just did not care because I seriously hate that woman. I hated her from her first introduction in the book, and my hatred only grew. I wanted her to be killed off, not just because she’s a POS, but also because she wasn’t furthering the plot (at least for me) and was more of a fly in my ear nuisance. Same with Cat's idiot grandparents. Infuriating. I know not everyone is like me, but if that were my mom and grandparents, I wouldn’t have spent anytime trying to comfort or coddle those close-minded, control-freak, nosy-britches, lazy, selfish, Bible-thumping, backwoods Ohio hillbillies. I don’t care if it would make me virtually alone in the world without family. They’re toxic and it’s amazing Cat wasn’t able to see that. I feel like there’s a lot missing from the story of Cat’s mom, or maybe I just really hope there is. (Sorry for all the "Cat's mom" stuff. I know Frost gives us her name when she's introduced to Timmie, I just can't remember what it is. Starts with a "J" I think. I guess I could go back and change all of them to "Ms. Crawfield" but whatever).
SPOILER:
LESSER SIDE CHARACTERS:
I also felt zero sympathy for Francesca. I was in no way concerned for her at any time. SPOILER:
I wanted more Charles, more Ian, more Switch, more Winston, and less Timmie (or more Timmie? I just couldn’t figure out how I felt about him, so either more or less). I know there’s only so much you can fit into a first book in the series, and 364 pages is about the right amount, but I think Frost could have ended the story after the scene at Hennessey’s and given us more depth on the other characters and the world. Since the ending is super rushed, it felt like we went from 0-60 and I was holding on for dear life trying to fill in the blanks we were passing.
WORLD-BUILDING STUFF:
This world has vampires, ghouls, ghosts, and a half-vampire half-human. The world-building is decent, and we learn about the hierarchy of vampires (Masters, for example), but everything felt like it could have been explored more and taken deeper. I was hoping we’d get another chapter of Winston, or more info on ghouls, really just more of everything. (The sex scenes are also watered down after the first one. We just get hints of them, to let us know sex was had before the scene cuts. Again, anticlimactic.) As for the setting, I liked that the characters left Ohio occasionally, but I didn’t really ever feel like we really left Ohio, if that makes sense. From one crappy small-town to the next, the scenes were somehow very similar no matter what town we were in.
(Random note: this might be nothing, but at one point the Bennington Triangle is mentioned and it’s stated as having taken place in Maine, and when I googled it to see if it was real, it is. It just says it took place in Vermont, not Maine. Was this a purposeful change or was that really a mistake? How could you mistake the state if you had to do research on it for this book? I could be misunderstanding something, and it wasn’t a big deal anyway, just a small head-tilt fact that I wanted to mention.)
PLOT: 3.5 stars, CHARACTERS: 3.5 stars, SEXINESS: 3 stars, WRITING STYLE: 4 stars, WORLD: 3 stars.
I’ve heard this series gets better, so I’m going to stick with it and see where it goes. I might take a break after this one though, read something in between this and the second book to cleanse my pallet and give me time to flesh out my feelings about it. I enjoyed reading Halfway to the Grave, it just wasn’t as good as I thought it would be and I can’t stop feeling like something major was missing. As far as PNR books go, it’s definitely not in the absolute trash cliché with a half-assed plot meant only to fill in the pages around the sex scenes folder, but it wasn’t in the best-of-PNR folder with the Fever series by Moning either. This was a light read that could’ve used a lot more depth.
This book started off really slow for me. I think the reason I had trouble getting into is was the corny British slang that Bones was using constantly and the fact that Cat was so anti-vampire and had such a huge dose of self-loathing to go along with it. She reminded me of the Anita Blake Series...which is one I gave up on a long ago. I don't mind having bad vamps in the story, but I usually don't care for the ones that the storyline centers just on hunting down and killing vamps. I like my vamps to be the good guys, and once you got past the corny British Slang Bones is definitely a good guy. I ended up really liking him, almost wishing I was in his head instead of Cat's. About half-way through the book the world and characters started growing on me and I was able to zip through the rest of the book and even started looking forward to reading the next one...which is good because I picked up four of them for cheap at a book sale. Can't say that I am sorry to see what happen to Cat's Grandparents, and I wish we could have left behind her Mother as well. The book ended with quite the cliffhanger and I'm actually looking forward to reading what happens next. Hope the story and world continues to evolve and get more interesting.
This one is so far the best first book in a PNR series that I've started this past week. Cat is quite immature and the relationship felt instalovey. The plot was solid and kept me interested the whole time.
Do not listen to the audiobook, the English accent makes Dick Van Dykes cockney in Mary Poppins sound authentic. This ruins Bones. Cat is annoying and emotionally immature. She doesn’t gain maturity.
Honestly i want so badly not to like this because it's full of cliches, some of them pretty toxic. But this is some excellent trash. The British accent is very dick van dyke though. I might read the other books if I have nothing better to do.