Review: HALFWAY TO THE GRAVE

Halfway To The Grave by Jeaniene Frost
Narrated by Tavia Gilbert
Book 1 of the Night Huntress Novel series
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: paperback, audiobook

About Halfway To 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 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 newfound 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.

Source: Info in the About Halfway To The Grave was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1421990.Halfway_to_the_Grave on 10/02/2012.

Review:

I picked up this book for three reasons. One, because this book is in my genre. I am an urban fantasy geek! Second, there were so many glowing reviews and recommendations on this series that I just need to at least try it out. Three, the cover art is so gorgeous!! I would have bought the book even without recommendations, synopsis and genre, but just based on the cover alone!

I started reading this book in paperback format. It took me sometime to get to the halfway mark and stopped... until I got my hands on the audiobook format from the library. The story telling quality is good but the heroine is just this side of stupid and I found it irritating! Audiobook is my way of cheating and finishing a book I find difficult to finish. However audiobooks tends to be expensive so I only go for the cheap ones or library copies like this one. So I finally managed to finish this book. It wasn't as bad, the second time around, with the audiobook. Maybe because I could hit the "forward" button and didn't have to listen to Cat being stupid. Because for a kick-ass heroine, she sure does act stupid sometimes. She behaves in such a manner that goes against all description of her that she becomes unrecognizable. Not very endearing in a main protagonist. There are books where the story telling quality is so good that I could marginally tolerate the stupidity and it might just happen with this series... However I tend not to blame Cat's "stupid" moves on the character development because everybody else in the story were well developed characters. It looks to me like it was the author's attempt to fill the plot to conveniently fit the story and give the book a bit of drama. So the author made Cat and Bones act stupid so that the bad guys seems to be winning and then the protagonists could show off and save the world. Weak plot! Not to mention irritating to read! If this book is a sample of this author's work, I would not be buying another book by this author. I now regret buying the paperback edition of this book!

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 4
Story itself = 3
Ending = 3
World building = 4
Cover art = 4.5
Pace = 1
Plot = 1
Narration = 4.5

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 cherries

Thank you to the RCT Library for letting me borrow this audiobook!!

FTC Disclosure:
This audiobook was borrowed from the library. No money received for this review.