Book Rec/Review: Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn
Kitty and the Midnight Hour has werewolves, vampires, a strong female POV character: all these things naturally influenced me to buy this book. I finally got around to reading it on my sick day, and now I want to share my thoughts briefly.
Kitty Norville, midnight hour DJ and reluctant werewolf, is a classic spunky heroine, but she's not obnoxiously perfect and magnetically attractive. She come across as a real girl, dealing with life-defining events, confused and finding her way, but not uber-angsty. This is as much a coming-of-age story as thriller. Kitty's growth was natural, rather than bigger than life.
Kitty has friends, associates, and enemies, and they all ring true. No one seems cardboard, even the baddies. Her alphas, Carl and Meg, are weak but not cartoonishly evil.
There's a cool werewolf hunter named Cormac who has Ranger vibes (Ranger's a character from Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series), but he remains mysterious in this book and not a typical love interest. I like that sort of restraint in an author.
After the shift in Hamilton's later novels to sexsexsex, I appreciate the lack of authorial kink indulgence in this book, with the erotic or violent scenes contributing to plot and character explication rather than for author/reader titillation.
In sum, if you like this sort of supernatural genre fiction, pick this novel up next time you are in the store. I am tempted to order the sequel online immediately. (I tend to buy in stores because I like browsing and the total experience of fondling books before I buy, so that means something.)
Kitty Norville, midnight hour DJ and reluctant werewolf, is a classic spunky heroine, but she's not obnoxiously perfect and magnetically attractive. She come across as a real girl, dealing with life-defining events, confused and finding her way, but not uber-angsty. This is as much a coming-of-age story as thriller. Kitty's growth was natural, rather than bigger than life.
Kitty has friends, associates, and enemies, and they all ring true. No one seems cardboard, even the baddies. Her alphas, Carl and Meg, are weak but not cartoonishly evil.
There's a cool werewolf hunter named Cormac who has Ranger vibes (Ranger's a character from Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series), but he remains mysterious in this book and not a typical love interest. I like that sort of restraint in an author.
After the shift in Hamilton's later novels to sexsexsex, I appreciate the lack of authorial kink indulgence in this book, with the erotic or violent scenes contributing to plot and character explication rather than for author/reader titillation.
In sum, if you like this sort of supernatural genre fiction, pick this novel up next time you are in the store. I am tempted to order the sequel online immediately. (I tend to buy in stores because I like browsing and the total experience of fondling books before I buy, so that means something.)