Halfway to the Grave is one of the many late 2000s PN-romance novels published, and very much a product of its time. You want slut-shaming? There is an abundance of it. You want some questionable lines on SA and racism? That’s definitely here. You want quirky, Mary-Sue MC that’s definitely not just Sarah Michelle Geller’s Buffy with red hair? Cat is where it’s at. You want a bad boy vampire that can’t decide if he’s hot or corny? The Spike wannabe is also here too.

And even though I make all these complaints, I didn’t think this book was terrible. Yes, this story has loads (and I genuinely mean loads) of our heroine finding hundreds of ways to shit on other women, and some really problematic takes on SA. But I thought the plot and romance was entertaining nonetheless. The mystery aspect lost me about halfway in though, and I just was following for Cat and Spike-I mean Bones by the end.

I also want to say before I finish this review, I absolutely love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s one of my favorite tv shows, and I adore Spike. I also love Spuffy, and I think if you’re in that boat, you will probably enjoy this book (as long as you can look past the problematic elements). I think for me though, the problematic elements were just too much at times (and again, I’m not giving this book much fault for that. Talk of things such as SA and feminism were definitely different in 2007). But if you’re a Spike lover such as myself, Bones is your new book boyfriend bc this man is literally just Spike copied and pasted. He has the bleached hair, the leather trench coats, the stupid quips. Bro even has a fucking British accent (and the audiobook narrator did him so dirty with it, he sounded so fucking stupid lmao).

Anyways, not terrible, but not great. I’ll probably continue on to see if it gets better, but this was definitely not a new favorite.