I'm gonna be honest with you, the first third or so of this book is DULL. Nina, is winy and her personality can be summed up with some serious family issues and a constant hatred of one (in)famous Buffy Summers, and then things finally get interesting and I started to slowly and ever so surely warm up to it over the course of the rest of the book.

It's fun y'all, like genuinely fun, but it's also kinda basic too. It feels like there's a lot of diversity for diversity's sake thrown in

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like Artemis/Honora (who I COULD have totally rooted for, if y'know, Kiersten White had actually had them together for more than five pages) and Rhys/Cillian who....well we just don't actually know much about them really.

Slayer is full of a ton of background characters who unfortunately are sidelined in order for Nina to receive her own arc. The good news is that this is the first book in the series so this problem can be rectified in future books, however the bad news is that sometimes when the inevitable bad things happen and stakes are high for any of the supposed main characters, part of you might be left wondering 'do I actually care as much as I know I'm meant to?'

It's definitely not all bad though. There's a lot of action, and this is definitely written by someone who is a fan of the Buffyverse thanks to the namedrops of (off the top of my head)

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Pylea, Angel Investigations, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce and Robin Wood

oh and maybe some cameos by none other than

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Faith Lehane and Buffy Summers herself.

There's definitely the basis for a good series, but an obvious villain and lack of character development for supposed main characters means I can't rate this any higher than a four. Definitely looking forward to seeing where Kiersten White takes this next though.