Kitty and the Midnight Hour

Good writing but meh plot and characters. Had potential tho.

An old favorite, still awesome.

This is the first urban fantasy book that I have finished (or at least today's definition of urban fantasy, which I won't debate here but I think of as either vampires or werewolves or the like in a more modern setting than typical fantasy medieval setting). Urban fantasy is not a favorite genre of mine, in fact, far from it. And my reasons all have to do with depth: depth of story/plot, depth of character, depth of emotion, depth of theme(s), depth of symbolism, depth of history, etc. I think urban fantasy has a definite place on the bookshelf, but generally not on my bookshelf. And I'm not saying that all urban fantasy isn't deep, but well, much of it doesn't appear to be, and that's most likely intentional.

So for an urban fantasy book, I liked this first book in the Kitty Norville series. Kitty Norville is a werewolf living in Colorado who works as a late night DJ. Eventually, her show becomes more of a talk show with interviews and callers and discussions about fantastical creatures such as Kitty herself. Now throw in an abusive pack leader, a hunky assassin, and a bossy vampire and the result is Kitty's first adventure.

The author has a story that ends at the end of this book but she also introduces what I bet will become an over-arcing story that later books will continue to visit. I really enjoyed the playlist that Ms. Vaughn put in the beginning of the book, explaining that these particular songs were playing while she was writing. I did not read to the songs, but I kind of wished I had, and maybe I will try it out.

I respect this particular author who I've seen at several cons, and that's why I read the book. I'm still not a big fan of urban fantasy, but I do enjoy this author, and will read more of this series.

I wasn't sure if this was a good I would like... even though it was my second time through. Sometimes my taste just really changes.

Kitty is great and I love reading her life. You see her struggles and she tries to get through them. She definitely has character development and I'm excited to see how far she will go. I'm sad about some events :( and I hope there is become permanent cast members besides Kitty and not just Matt or Ozzie who are really just background characters.

I don't like how the Alpha acts in this book... this isn't the mating for life thing because, as cool as that sounds, but just taking advantage... taking what you want from pack members BECAUSE you're Alpha... I hope we get to see more Alphas later.... I hope they are nicer.

The radio host aspect is really awesome and I enjoyed it.

As for it being an audiobook, the narrator's voice took some getting used to but, sometimes that happens with new books. Kitty's voice made her sound mature and so done with everyone's shit. I loved it. It really fit personality.

So, yeah. Hopefully I'll finally get to the sequel this time.

Really enjoyed this book. I am not crazy about werewolves stories but this one was really enjoyable. It was a fast read and kept pretty light most of the time. I'm definitely going to be reading the rest of the series.

The Midnight Hour was literally created overnight when Kitty was on the night shift at KNOB radio station and one straggler called with a question about the supernatural. Lo and behold, Kitty became the supernatural-advice guru and her “producer” asked her to continue with the episodes as “The Midnight Hour”.

Characters: Since the book started off immediately with Kitty doing her thing at the radio station, I thought this added a quality to make her a lovable character. Her submissiveness was not overly exposed but just kind of put out there and accepted as a primal instinct would be. Normally, I like my heroines to be strong and superwoman-like but I reveled in how Vaugn painted Kitty because it suited her to be that type of person. Consequently, Kitty did also have the potential to move up in her pack.

As for the supporting characters, Carl and Meg stood out the most for me. Both made it their mission to protect their pack but as the climax crept closer, I got to see their flaws and true colors. Being the leaders of the local pack of werewolves, one would think it was practically mandatory to stick with the pack but that's the thing with people in power, they can do whatever the hell they want, and not give a flying hoot of what that would do to their underlings.

Another character that stood out for the opposite reasons entirely was Rick, because of his type of relationship with Kitty. He was sort of like a third party member but simultaneously was incorporated into Kitty's life through an off-hand friendship that I grew fond of. When was the last time there was just a companionable relationship between two characters in any genre these days? There always has to be some type of tension between all the characters that drives me nuts.

As for T.J. and Cormac, both were very nice figures in the book and rounded out Kitty's character well. They were polar opposites but both seemed to care about Kitty, though on different levels.

Plot: As time went on and The Midnight Hour was popularized, Kitty was faced with varying levels of complications that helped develop her character. Nothing before had made her as proud as her new radio show, something that she did for herself and was important to her. Obstacles soon arise that want to take her down–the vampires, her pack, an assassin–but none of this really stops her from getting her way. I enjoyed learning how the vampires and werewolves interact in the book, and how the underlings tend to do their business behind the leaders' backs.One thing that sort of had me troubled was the mentioning of the other supernatural beings–besides werewolves and vampires–that don't really show up physically in the book. I believe the book could have revolved around just those two main species without having dealt into the others, at least not in the first book of the series. Finally, I have to talk about how the ending scene where all of the fighting and attempts to kill Kitty come down to a final battle between the alphas and the underlings. I can't stop myself from saying that this scene really killed some of the excitement I had to read the rest of this series. I knew that whatever outcome that scene had was going to set how the rest of the Kitty Norville series would take off. That's why I was so disappointed when it just fell flat and felt somehow restrained from the awesome ending it could have been. Honestly, I wanted to scream at Kitty for not taking her revenge–for the killing-attempts and something else that happened to “finish” the fight. I don't know if that's a spoiler and frankly don't care because seriously readers must be warned of it. It affected me and the way I perceived the book so much so that I drastically changed my opinion of some of the choices Kitty made, and reflected on how the author would continue the series considering she only cleared up one of the main conflicts.

I believe this book was too short to get a real feel of what's to come, and it didn't really set a basis as to where the plot's going to take place, so I feel like saying “it's been shot to hell” for some reason...

Rating: 2.5 out 5 stars