Goodreads | Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

“Making a spell is easy. It’s trusting you did it right that’s hard.”

*McCree from Overwatch voice* Dead Witch Walking is just a product of its time and it just reads like an early 2000s PNR/UF story. I guarantee if I read this back when I was in love with the Fever series, the Kate Daniels series, and the Riley Jenson Guardian series, then I would have enjoyed this way more than I did. Sadly, we are in 2019, and the true fact is that this didn’t age well, in my opinion. But I still had a lot of fun reading this one!

This is a story about a witch named Rachel who works as a bounty hunter for a pretty slimy boss. But while on a mission, she and a coworker find a Leprechaun who grants them three wishes, and one of Rachel’s wishes is to quit her job, but the coworker, Ivy, leaves with her and this bit of the bargain really upsets her boss. Like, upsets her boss so much that she now has a hit mark on her.

Ivy, Rachel, and Jinx (Rachel’s Pixie sidekick) all flee to an abandoned church, where Rachel and Ivy soon find out that Rachel’s blood is causing quite the reaction with vampires. And we get to see all the spells that Rachel is able to brew up, and she brews up some really cool things so that she can protect herself and try to uncover why her ex-boss wants to seek vengeance on her so badly.

My biggest complaint is how Ivy was handled in this book. Like, I don’t want to get that deep into this, but Ivy is a Asian vampire who isn’t doing things that most vampires in this world do. But she is really enthralled by Rachel’s blood and, in turn, Rachel kind of finds it a bit hard to resist Ivy, too, at least at the start. Like, if Rachel and Ivy would have gotten together, I obviously would have been ecstatic, and I actually thought the story was going in that direction, but the narrative quickly shifted to be all about how Rachel would get Ivy to not be attracted to her, while she admired every guy that enters the story. And the scenes were getting more and more uncomfortable with Ivy from Rachel’s perspective, and I just really started hated it so very much. This is without a doubt the reason it was hard for me to ever enjoy this book, honestly. Also, who the fuck would not want to be with Ivy? Like, how unbelievable.

My favorite part of this book was how an angel virus made this world almost apocalyptic, where humans are for sure not in control, and all the paranormal entities are not in hiding because they were immune to it and now are for sure the major population. I just thought that was such a cool spin, and really added to this world and made it something special.

Overall, I really did think this was a fun read, just a product of its time with some of the offensive lingo and the strange queerbaiting. But I would totally continue on because I am really curious to see where this story goes next. Also, I loved the setting of the abandoned church so much. Oh, and if it wasn’t obvious, I sort of completely fell in love with Ivy!

Instagram | Bloglovin’ | Twitter | Tumblr | Goodreads | Twitch | Wishlist | Youtube

Content and trigger warnings for many conversations that treated food very weirdly and triggering, murder, death, animal abuse, animal fighting rings, and assault.

Buddy read with Julie from Pages and Pens! ❤