Three Days to Dead by Kelly Meding
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Book one in the Dreg City series
Publication Date: November 2009
ISBN: 978-0553592863
Page Count: 416
My Rating: ★★★★1/2

Summary
When Evangeline Stone wakes up naked and bruised on a cold slab at the morgue--in a stranger's body, with no memory of who she is and how she got there--her troubles are only just beginning. Before that night she and the two other members of her Triad were the city's star bounty hunters, mercilessly cleansing the city of the murderous creatures living in the shadows, from vampires to shape-shifters to trolls. Then something terrible happened that not only cost all three of them their lives but also convinced the city's other Hunters that Evy was a traitor--and she can't even remember what it was.

Now she's a fugitive, piecing together her memory, trying to deal some serious justice--and discovering that she has only three days to solve her own murder before the reincarnation spell wears off. Because in three days Evy will die again--but this time there's no second chance. . . .

REVIEW

I loved this book. I loved the writing style in particular. This was my first time reading a Kelly Meding novel, and I found, to my delight, that she's a very concise writer, using short, punchy sentences conveying just enough information to tell you exactly what's happening and keep the pace of the story moving, without any flowery, over-the-top descriptions. Which is just how I like it.

I also loved the world building. I always enjoy it when there are lots of different supernatural races interacting, which this series has. I liked the idea of the Triads of Hunters working to police the non-humans of Dreg city. While it's obviously not the first series to ever feature a vampire hunter, the way it was so organised and militant certainly felt like a new and imaginative slant on it.

The characters were very vivid and real and even a little bit damaged. Even among the action-packed, race against time plot line, there was still time to grow really attached to some of them. So much so, that I may have had a little something in my eye at a couple of points during the read . Or it could have been a trick of the light. I'll never tell.

Overall this was a great urban fantasy debut. The only slight negative (and it is teeny tiny) is that because of the premise of girl-wakes-up-in-new-body-with-only-three-days-to-live, a lot of stuff had to be told to us in flashbacks, which sort of caused the romantic element to fall a little bit flat as the relationship didn't develop in a linear fashion...That probably doesn't make any sense unless you've read it, but you'll see what I mean when you do. And you absolutely should!

4.5 Stars! ★★★★1/2