“Halfway to the Grave” by Jeaniene Frost is the story of Catherine “Cat” Crawfield, college student and vampire hunter. As the story opens, twenty-two year-old Cat is driving in her truck in the middle of the night when she is stopped by the police. Her taillight is out. But she’s not worried about her taillight; what she has in the bed of her truck would be much more difficult to explain. She has the dead body of a vampire who is bleeding out. She had tussled with him earlier and drove a silver stake into his heart, ending his centuries-old life.

Cat has her own issues. Growing up she always felt different but could never pin down exactly why. There was a sadness that always loomed in her life. Her father had abandoned her and her mother and she had never even seen him. It was natural for her to wonder about him but her mother would never talk about him.

Cat was smart and did well in school but where she departed from her peers was in her physicality. She was faster, more agile and stronger than her classmates. A group of boys made the mistake of taunting her about her mother when she was fourteen. A powerful anger was summoned from deep within her. She tore at the boys and single-handedly made mince-meat out of all of them. When she went inside the glowing green eyes that she saw for the first time that looked back at her in the mirror told her that her differences with the other kids were not of a typical nature.

Justina, her mother, was forced to tell her the truth. Cat was too smart and savvy to lie to any longer. At sixteen Justina had been date-raped by a vampire. He of course was never part of her life and five months later, Cat was born. Justina always feared that her daughter’s vampire nature might someday come to the forefront and become the dominant part of her complex personality.

From that point on Cat began to hunt vampires with the goal of taking out as many as she could because they were all evil. She had the ultimate aim of finding and killing her father. She wanted to end his undead existence to avenge her mother and to hopefully resolve the pain in her life. There had always been part of herself that she detested. Would killing the monster that gave her life bring her peace?

While in the midst of her vampire hunting, she encounters a vampire nicknamed “Bones”, real name, Crispin. He is different than the other vile creatures she has dealt with. He is handsome and fun and sexy and he seems to look out for her welfare. He is immediately attracted to her and she is attracted to him as well; but, she initially resists getting involved with him. For one thing, it would kill her mother! For another, she doesn’t want to fall in love with a vampire!

Bones is persistent, and they have much in common. He is a vampire hunter, too. He hunts down evil vampires and stresses to Cat that not all vampires are bad. He recruits and trains her to help him hunt down the vampire Hennessey and his gang of vicious vampires who abduct and kill young women. Eventually, they are successful; and, in the end Cat and Bones give into temptation and fall in love. But circumstances eventually force Cat to leave him for his own good. As she walks away from him, she recalls his words: If you ever run away from me. . . I will find you.”