Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn

One Book Two’s current read-along is the Kitty Norville series.  A werewolf named Kitty hosts a late-night advice talk show for supernaturals.  You know all hell is going to break loose!

Title:  Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Author:  Carrie Vaughn
Series: Kitty Norville Book 01
Publish Date:  November 1, 2005
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
Source: Purchase

Publisher’s Description: Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station—and a werewolf in the closet. Sick of lame song requests, she accidentally starts “The Midnight Hour,” a late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged.

After desperate vampires, werewolves, and witches across the country begin calling in to share their woes, her new show is a raging success. But it’s Kitty who can use some help. With one sexy werewolf hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew.

Possible spoilers beyond this point.

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Kat Mandu says…

Kitty Norville just got way in over her head. Sassy, tough, and sentimental, Kitty is a freshly-turned werewolf in Denver. Her job as a DJ at the local radio station takes a turn for the interesting when she accidentally starts up a talk show about the supernatural community. People start calling in looking for advice on werewolves, vampires, and other things that go bump in the night.

Her local pack doesn’t like it and although the show gets major hits, Kitty’s personal life begins to take a turn for the worse. Her Alpha, Carl, is indecisive and weak, protecting Kitty (someone Carl thinks is a cub) one moment and then turning on her the next. Meg, the female alpha and Carl’s mate, is determined to either kill Kitty or get her out of the way, a plan that begins to work.

To make things worse, Kitty begins to earn enemies. The local vampire master sends a werewolf hunter after her. A religious cult promising a cure from vampirism and lycanthropy emerges and kills one of her listeners on the air. And Meg keeps sending killers her way.

Though her road is long and hard, Kitty begins to grow. At first, when I heard about the pack, I didn’t find it as abusive as it later became. Her fellow wolves protected her and comforted her. But as things progressed, it was obvious she was going to be better without them. She loses a friend along the way, but she manages to escape their betrayal by leaving. She becomes more defiant, brave, and smart as dark things come to life and I love the change.

I also think she’s funny. She tends to talk a lot, a fact that annoys Cormac and some of the others, but the people listening to her show don’t seem to mind at all.

This was an enjoyable first book I loved rereading. It’s not my favorite in the series but I will always cherish it.

Invested Ivana says…

I forgot how much I love this book! I’m rereading the Kitty Norville series as part of One Book Two’s current read-along, and it’s been fun to meet Kitty, Cormac, Ben, Rick, and TJ all over again.

I think my favorite scenes in this book are between Kitty and Cormac. I love the end of the assassination scene where Cormac finally looks around the doorway at Kitty and says, “That you, Norville?” I can just picture big, bad Cormac, loaded with weapons, seeing this tiny blonde girl hunched in the corner with headphones on. You wonder if he could have killed her, looking like that, even if he wanted to.

I also love the scene where Kitty’s call-in listeners are asking Kitty whether she’s dating Cormac. First, she can hardly believe her listeners would think it’s okay to date someone who tried to kill her, then Cormac calls in and tells her to change the subject right now! He’s obviously amused and playing with her, which just gives Kitty’s listeners more fuel for their imagination.

Those are the light-hearted moments in the book. The rest is pretty intense, from the twisted, dependent psychology of the wolf pack to the fear that drives Kitty from her hometown. It’s less disconcerting this time around, though, since I know how much better Kitty’s life becomes over the course of the next thirteen books.

This is one of my favorite books in one of my favorite series. It gets a shiny fat five from me.

Other reviews…

• The Book Smugglers
• Fangs for the Fantasy
• Vampire Book Club

If you like this book…

…you might try Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson series, Rachel Vincent’s Shifter series, or Eileen Wilk’s World of the Lupi series.