• The protagonist's unapologetic anger and rage and that she didn't allow herself to get sidetracked from her plan.
• The heavy cultural and historical influence.
• The disability representation.

• It does not really contain a love triangle, no matter how much they want to market it.
• I've seen the video where the author talks about how the book ended up in the YA category and how the second book is much more 'them' (they didn't cut any violence to still make YA). To me, it still felt YA because of the writing, which reminds me of fanfiction, with a lot of monologuing - inner monologue and in dialogue - and everything being thoroughly explained. We get a monologue about every action, decision, interpretation, which tells us how the book got there and what to think about it. That is more YA to me than any cut or tamed violence.

So, what did I like?

• It's full of action – things are happening and progressing, no endless lingering, inner monologuing or stupid banter. Take this, Karen Moning's sex fae that robbed me of valuable hours of my life!
• The action scenes are well written and entertaining to read.
• It doesn't take itself too seriously, and it actually had me laughing a few times. Frost knows what genre she's writing in when Cat wonders about how to subtly pull out her weapon and thinks, "There was no way I could go for the surprise in my pants yet". Or when Bones manages to knock her out because she's too prude to look at him naked. Or when he makes her look him in the eye while he throws very explicit profanities at her to train her for the "flirting" of her future victims.
• Vampire lore that follows an in-world logic.
• Bones mostly treats Cat like an equal. He tells her what his plans are, what he wants her role to be, he gives her info beforehand and doesn't just send her into an unknown situation without context. He listens to her and doesn't expect her to just follow whatever he says. When there's conflict because he didn't tell her something, there's usually a reason other than "me genius, girl dumb".
• I don't know, I actually found it funny that Ohio is the central hub of the supernatural world.
• I did find myself wanting to tell Cat to get her act together with her identity crises, but she's still smarter and more capable than any other genre protagonist I've met before, and I really appreciate that.
• For 2007, this book is very social justice aware. It's heavy-handed, but it's there and that's a good thing. The author wants to say something with her story.
• Cat is prejudiced and she's challenged, and she learns.
• Contrary to other authors in this genre, I think Jeaniene Frost had sex with a man at least once in her life that she actually enjoyed.

What did I not like?

• The audiobook narrator could NOT imitate a British accent (or any accent) if her life depended on it. Which unfortunately doesn't prevent her from trying. A lot. 
• Of course Cat is not like the other girls. Can we put this trope to rest now, please?
• When it comes to other women,
  they either die quickly or get raped (or both), or they're Cat's competition for Bones and then they die. There isn't a single positive female relationship for Cat.
• So much rape. Be warned.
• Cat does turn into an irrational protagonist when the romantic subplot needs some misunderstanding.
• The author is a US American urban fantasy author, so there's of course tons of sexual repression in the protagonist, because she has to be innocent and sexy at the same time. I'm not sure what's going on with all these authors' repressed sexuality - Mormonism? USA-ism? Bible Belt-ism? Sure, patriarchy, but it's just weird and problematic. Just let a 21-year-old woman enjoy herself, dammit! Especially when you already include a very obvious critique of black-and-white religious beliefs about good and evil.
• Every evil guy has to be extremely obvious in his evilness. They cannot only do one evil thing. They have to do ALL THE EVIL THINGS.
• Rape Count for this book: 6 (+ 1 that's at least coercion)
• Times bad guys attempted to rape Cat: 6
• One rape victim they rescue gets a very cheap out of that possible character arc because to deal with it would be inconvenient for the protagonists' plot, I guess.
• To make Bones stand out as the good guy, he's got it all: he's a feminist, a saviour of and friend to natives, a friend with sex workers, saviour of abused women, and he even threatens to kill the guy who coerced Cat into sex before running away. Apparently, Frost finds this tricky when she wants him to come across as this anti-hero badass. So, what makes Bones stand out from all the other truly evil men is that he doesn't rape women. This means that every man who's supposed to be evil has to be a rapist as well, because how could we tell him apart from Bones otherwise?
• I never thought I'd see the line
  "I pushed the image of my grandparents' crumpled forms out of my mind"
  right before a sex scene.