Guest Review: This Side of the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

Posted May 11, 2011 by Tracy in Reviews | 1 Comment

Publisher: Avon, Harper CollinsGenres: Paranormal Romance

Tracy’s review of This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress #5) by Jeaniene Frost

FYI – This review contains spoilers from the series.

Danger waits on both sides of the grave.

Half-vampire Cat Crawfield and her vampire husband Bones have fought for their lives, as well as for their relationship. But just when they’ve triumphed over the latest battle, Cat’s new and unexpected abilities threaten to upset a long-standing balance . . .


With the mysterious disappearance of vampires, rumors abound that a species war is brewing. A zealot is inciting tensions between the vampires and ghouls, and if these two powerful groups clash, innocent mortals could become collateral damage. Now Cat and Bones are forced to seek help from a dangerous “ally”—the ghoul queen of New Orleans herself. But the price of her assistance may prove more treacherous than even the threat of a supernatural war . . . to say nothing of the repercussions Cat never imagined.

It’s been six months since Cat was turned from half-vampire into fully fledged vampire but Cat being Cat things aren’t exactly normal. You see instead of surviving on blood from humans, she has to drink vamp blood and when she does she gets, for a time, the powers from the donor. (If she drinks blood from a telekinetic vamp, for example, she will then have telekinetic powers for a short time.) She is now considered, by some people – and especially head Ghoul, Apollyon – to be a threat to both vamps and ghouls. Apollyon wants to start a war against the vamps and is making Cat the focus of the issue.

Cat, Bones, Vlad, Mencheres and a few others get together and go a-huntin for Apollyon but can’t seem to locate him. Along the way Cat runs into some problems of her own with Marie, the ghoul queen, who has her own agenda.

In between fighting various beings and searching for the bad guy Cat returns to her old team and finds some highly emotional family issues that are completely unexpected.

While I ADORED books 1 & 2 in this series I haven’t liked books 3-5 quite as much. I’m usually one who prefers to have her HEA’s at the end of each book I read so I don’t usually read UF. This series was so good, however, I just wanted to read more and more about Bones and Cat.

With this story it started off really good and I was getting more excited about the story as I read. But then it just kind of fizzled out for me. But then when I least expected it, it became quite good again. This back and forth happened for me for most of the book. I realized that when the book got quite good it was either during fighting scenes or emotional scenes between Cat and Bones and/or Cat and her family members. There seemed to be a quite a lot of introspection in this story from Cat – and while I can appreciate that she needed to figure things out with her life, I just wasn’t as enraptured with those sections as I might have been.

Overall it was a good book, even with the highs and lows but not on the level, imho, as the books that started the series.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

The Series:
Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress, Book 1)One Foot in the Grave (Night Huntress, Book 2)At Grave's End (Night Huntress, Book 3)Destined for an Early Grave (Night Huntress, Book 4)This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, Book 5)

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place

This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here or here in e-format.


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One response to “Guest Review: This Side of the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

  1. I can see how, after four books, it gets a little trying when there is so much internal monologue going on. That has always been one of my pet peeves about relationship-based novels. But again, these books are just riveting in that when all is said and done, the characters are the thing and no matter what else is going on, their connection to one another takes over. Very good review!

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