Sunday I ended up walking near a good Borders and decided to stop in and see if there was anything that piqued my interest. For no logical reason I purchased Night Life by Caitlin Kittredge. Had I used my brain I would have never purchased it. Kat Richardson describes it as

…a little grittier than a lot of Urban Fantasy — more a hybrid of Urban Fantasy and Police Thriller — but still chock-full of the fantastic elements and urban grunge that are the genre’s hallmark.

Which is right up my alley, but I hadn’t read her review when I bought it. I knew from the cover that it was a werewolves + wiches + strong female protagonist book which is a genre I thoroughly enjoy but, it’s set in “Nocture City”, our heroine is a werewolf cop named “Luna”, and “when she investigates primp suspect Dmitri Sandovsky, she can’t resist his wolfish charms.” Please feel free to run to the bathroom and retch. I don’t know what the hell compelled me to buy this. It sounds like a cheesy trashy romance novel with fantasy creatures thrown in.

Then I read it. I got to where the bad guy was unmasked, the ultimate problem revealed, and major obstacles laid out and found it was 2 AM. Damn it. I forced myself to set the book down in front of the couch and go to bed. Monday morning it was nowhere to be found. I searched under the couch again and again. I searched in between the cushions, under Ebony’s bed (in front of the couch). I searched the bedroom. I searched the kitchen, the bathroom, the coffee tables, behind the couch, around the couch, even in the fridge and the freezer. No book.

The fact that I looked that hard for the book when I’m in the middle of another Urban Fantasy, and have a pile of other recreational reading lined up, should give you an idea of how impressed I was with this. I had pretty-much resigned myself to having to re-buy it when John called. I told him I needed some psychic advice. He told me to check the coffee tables, and even though I’d done so many times already, I got down on my knees and looked. No book…but “what’s that green piece of plastic?” pull… “hmm If I missed that before, then maybe I missed the book near it…” I shove my arm over a foot under the couch, and feel something stiff at my finger-tips. Reach. Grab. Pull….. THE BOOK!

I’ll do a full review once I finish it because she’s a new author, it’s a great first book, although a little rough at the start, and she’s likely to have a hard time overcoming the strong odor of cheese given off by the cover text. Plus, with this genre being polluted by cheesy romance novelists and really bad writing, I like doing what I can to promote good new authors, especially when their first novel is so good.

The drawing, by the way, is of the girl on the cover, who’s all black clothes and gothy “I’m Pagan” eyeshadow. Again, I have no clue what made me buy this. It looks horrible. Thank goodness “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

[Update] Full review here.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Comic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.