Review: Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn

Title: Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Author: Carrie Vaughn
Series: Kitty Northville #1
Pages: 259
Publisher: Warner Books
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Source: Library

Goodreads Description:
Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station - and a werewolf in the closet. Her new late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged is a raging success, but it's Kitty who can use some help. Her Alpha, as well as the leader of the local vampire family, is pretty upset with the new publicity that Kitty's show is bringing to the paranormal community. With one sexy werewolf-hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew.

My Review:
Woo! At Last! A new Urban Fantasy series that I can really sink my teeth into! hahah...I know...bad pun...whatever...but I'm really glad I found Kitty! I only picked her up because I needed to have a "K" for my alphabet reading challenge, but I got a whole lot more than I bargained for. I almost didn't want to classify Kitty as Urban Fantasy. There's not too much of the desolation and dramatics that I've come to expect in my UF literature. But there's really no other place for Kitty. Who ironically is a werewolf...that would be an embarrassing name to live down with a pack of wolves...I think the reason that this series seems so different is because she has a job outside of her pack and solving mysteries. Her DJ-ing takes up a lot of the book, but I really enjoyed that. She was like a live, on-call therapist to the paranormal community without all that political correctness.

I have to say that I was NOT amused by the pack dynamics involved with Kitty's pack, especially the two alphas. Some A lot of authors make the Alpha male thing look super sexy. Think Adam from the Mercy Thompson series...or Clay and Jeremy from The Otherworld series. In those books, and many others, the Alpha thing is hot as all hell. There's really nothing more powerful than a man who takes control...yet somehow, Vaughn has missed that in this book. The alpha male in this book, Carl, is dominant to a point of making me hate him and scream abuse. He sleeps with any pack member he wants, and easily turns to violence to assert his dominance, even when it is not warranted. He is also very easily manipulated by his mate, which is at odds to all the other aspects of his character. Carl finally does something at the end of the book that takes him past all redemption, and it is my dearest wish that he is killed off very soon in the next book.

Luckily, Carl is not the main love interest.  Ironically, the guy that had me drooling was a werewolf hunter...Cormac.I thought their banter at their first meeting was hilarious. Cormac is supposed to be killing Kitty, but he calls her up and talks to her live on-air...how ridiculous is that? I found myself laughing and then being terrified at each alternating page, and I totally loved it. Talk about love/hate relationship.The best thing about him was that he was there when Kitty needed him. Carl said he'd protect her, but he and his wife are basically the biggest problems in Kitty's life. Instead of hindering, Cormac actually assists in aiding Kitty with her murder investigations and pack struggles.Cormac's just the right blend of bad ass and awesome. At this point his and Kitty's relationship is pretty fluid...but I have very high hopes for it. Yay! Team Cormac!

On thing I found really refreshing, was that there was no huge inner struggle over what it means to be a human or a werewolf. Kitty is logical in her assessments about life, and she doesn't hate herself or the wolf inside her. At times this was a little weird,because I've grown accustomed to having angsty werewolf MC's and I'm not used to this whole self-acceptance thing...at least not without chapters and chapters of drawn out agonizing lol. So thanks Carrie, for not putting me through that for a  second eight-thousandth time. I did kind of feel that the wolf was rather neglected in this book though. Like...she had her few paragraphs...and Kitty kind of sort of acknowledges her...but it's like shes only a small part of Kitty...like a fingernail...not the huge part that I assumed being a werewolf would be. Still, it was nice to find a main character who didn't either glorify or hate the wolf inside of her. It was a "natural" part of her and it was very cool that she accepted it. When the wolf did have forefront, it was interesting to be inside her mind. Everything was simplistic and driven towards a specific goal. It was cool to see that part of the animal was alive and well and that the human part of Kitty was clearly gone at this point.

Kitty is a really nice twist to the vampire/werewolf genre. I give Kitty and the Midnight Hour 4 Keys out of 5. This was definitely an entertaining and pretty good read, and it offers a different take on the usual play-by-play for a genre overrun. There's action, blood, violence, and sexy supernaturals...all awesome in my book. I'll have to grab the rest of the series when I swing by the Library next week :)