Wild Hunger (Heirs to Chicagoland) by Chloe Neill

Elise is the first vampire born, the first vampire who has never been a human - and the first vampire with a dark secret presence in her mind

She has left home to live in Paris for several years to try and get some space to find herself. But with the talks to try and establish a lasting peace in Europe, she finds herself back in Chicago

And facing the beast inside her - and a plot to end the peace talks and put the whole city at risk

I… can’t say I’m a huge fan of Elisa? I mean I don’t feel any especially personality with her. And I’m trying hard not to compare her to Merit - but it’s inevitable that since this series is literally the heir to the previous Chicagoland series; the protagonists are going to be compared. And Merit with her love of books and junk food and baseball, her snark and close relationships, her determination to face down Ethan and her father - Merit had personality, Merit was a character and she was surrounded by other characters.

Elise… isn’t? I mean she likes coffee… that’s kind of like the only thing I know about her. Her personality,wishes, desires, hopes, everything is subsumed into both her struggle with the Beast and her I-hate-him-but-we’re-definite-love-interests-Connor.

What’s most frustrating is how much meat there’s there! She’s the first born vampire. She grew up never seeing the sun and literally not knowing what she was and surrounded by supernaturals. She moved away to France and spent years there trying to find herself. How can this not inform her character? How can someone so unique with such different life experiences BE SO BLAND?! Why doesn’t her years in France inform any of her character except her hanging around with French vampires who are shuffled out of the way before we have to focus on them too much. Why isn’t her being the

And there’s the “beast” which is again, blandified. If your character is literally hosting a powerful magical entity that feasts on rage and turns her eyes red I expect it to be… more? I mean now and then she struggles to control it - as in we have a paragraph of her saying no to the Beast, and we move on. And when she loses control? She beats up someone who kind of deserves it? She fights hard in a situation where she’s already fighting? The unwillingness to make Elise do anything truly bad or awful with the Beast (she beat up a man who stole from and was going to sexually assault her best friend? Merit would do that twice, no need for the Beast) makes it all feel limp and, yes, bland

To add to the blandness we have the characters around her. Merit worked because she was surrounded by fun an awesome characters as well -he conflicts and romance with Ethan was interesting. She had Mallory her best friend which waxed and waned, there was Catcher and Jeff and her grandfather and the fraught relationship with her parents and even her frustrating relationship with Morgan. There were PEOPLE in her life and they were all informed enough and interesting enough to add to the story, to her story.

Box of Frogs (The Fractured Faery #1) by Helen Harper

Madrona woke up on a golf course next to a decapitated body and with absolutely no memory of what just happened, who she is or anything else for that matter

And with three goons apparently trying to kill her, amnesia may be the least of her worries. At least she seems to have super powers to help save the day! And with these powers she can certainly do a lot of good

I mean, she is one of the good guys. Right?

When I read The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Magic series (people say it’s a trilogy, I adamantly refuse to accept that this series is only 3 books long. Refuse refuse refuse. No novellas don’t count) I was joyously surprised as it was one of the funniest, realist, most entertaining book series I’ve read in a long time. I loved it and was determined to read more of this author’s work - especially since I had had another series but this author recommended (not this series… this is what comes of whimsically working from memory)

So I went into this book with immense amounts of glee and joy and so much of it worked.

I loved how Madrona, suffering from amnesia, goes about learning who she is - and what she is. I love her creeping realisation that she’s not actually a nice person, her horror when she thinks something that is… less than charitable and reels back at her own reaction. It also goes really nicely with her generally highly upbeat attitude and positivity and infinite confidence. I also like her snark and sass, her complete lack of shame and her willingness to dive in head first. And while this genre has no end of protagonists who prove they are Strong Female Protagonists but shouting and swearing at the closest authority figure or big guy with a large gun to show their strength. But the difference here is that Madrona is very aware that her mouth is an issue, a character flaw

And there’s also a very real conflict under the fun and snark - as Madrona learns more about her past activities and herself there’s a very real conflict and angst about exactly HOW much of a not-nice-person she was. And this is such a powerful thing - not having any memories of yourself but clearly having done some dubious things - and dubious things without the comfort of the little lies and excuses we tell ourselves. It’s an excellent internal conflict

In the Dawning by Simone Snaith

This book is short - very short, 121 pages. And this is a problem.

It’s a problem because this is either a stand alone book or the first book in a series. I’m on record insisting it’s a bad idea for any book to start its series with a short story or novella - your first book has to introduce all the hooks to draw us in. It has to show your writing, introduce and establish the main character(s), introduce and explore some of the world and preferably include a plot to interest and fascinate in its own right as well so the book doesn’t feel like a prologue. I don’t think you can do that in a novella. And as for a stand alone - I think it’s a rare novella that can pack all this development in on its own without a backing series.

And this book, I think, sadly doesn’t challenge my belief here. We have Genevieve - an interesting protagonist. She has an obvious supernatural background beyond her adoptive parents (and, honestly, in any urban fantasy, an adopted child is ALWAYS going to be a secret princess/demon/fairy/werewolf queen) but the hints are delivered with neither subtlety or exploration because we don’t have the space for that: we just have some moderately transparent references to being afraid of iron. We also have an excellent depiction of Genevieve’s depression - and the way it drags at her, the way depression haunts her, the way it casts a pall over so much of her life. It’s really well depicted - but it’s hard to truly appreciate it without it expanding over the rest of the story so much - because there’s so little space. Genevieve has the foundation for being a great character - and her art and vision as it creeps on and shows her more and more was similarly very well done - but lacked wider context given the rest of the plot.

She has what looks like some good and diverse friends - Claudia is latina and even in the relatively brief time she has to be developed her relationship with Genevieve is strong. Another friend introduced is Persian (the writer also shows a level of awareness of things like cultural appropriation but again not the room to explore). There was also a latino policeman, Elliot, who she falls in with who is supportive and helpful in the face of supernatural happening: but even here we have a level of rushing that makes their relationship feel forced and even a little creepy. Like, Genevieve seems to have a lot of casual off duty moments with this guy which would work better if there was some foundation there

But all of these characters are good and I’d ride happily with them through even an abbreviated plot and hurried relationships - but here’s the main snag. The plot isn’t really there… We have two supernatural guys (one of whom I’m mentally tagging as designated love interest) trying to stop a big bad supernatural threat that is consuming the realm and Geneveieve is our special chosen one who will stop it. Fine

Shadowhunters, Season 3, Episode 8: A Heart of Darkness

Lilith is free, the queen of Edom! The biggest, scariest demon ever who no doubt has schemes that could doom us all. In the face of this the gang has decided to… obsess about Jace and Clary!

Of course, it’s not like there’s anything more important in the world!

Lillith is awfully upset by there being a daylighter running around because he can banish her and ruin all her awful plans. She decides the best thing to do about this is to go visit the Seelie queen, since she’s the one who gave Simon the mark in the first place

She goes to the Seelie realm (possibly because the previous queen, before they became sworn enemies, gave her an invitation) and kills a few of the queen’s knights before confronting the queen. From this convo we learnt that when Lillith pissed off the last queen the Seelie gifted Eve with super-beauty and that the Seelie queen probably gave the mark to Simon as some kind of long term passive aggressive way of fucking with Lillith

To which we know the Seelie are both Supremely Petty and love to fight their wars 8 steps ahead

Lillith plans to kill the queen but she buys her life by selling out where Jace is because unlike everyone else on this show she doesn’t think Jace and Clary are the centre of the universe.

Jace is being imprisoned and doing the classic, pouty possession thing lashing out ineffectually while everyone else gets all serious. Rather than deal with Lillith and her world ending plans, Izzy and Alec decide to play around in Jace’s head helped by Magnus’s magic where we get some child actors trying to play these characters without upstaging the adults which must have been damn hard given the acting quality of this series.

After many little scenes which, in another series, would serve to build and grow his personality. Not this show.

We do have a wonderful scene where Jace begs Alec to kill him, please kill him, so he stops doing bad things.

I second this plea. Alas Alec says no. So he turns to Izzy and, alas, she also says no.

Don’t tease me Shadowhunters.

At this point Lillith arrives to steal Jace away and threaten Magnus. She doesn’t kill Magnus because his demon dad may start a war. Which suggests that that demon is invested in Magnus. Think we may show that at some point? Or is what should be a major character moment and story hook going to be a brushed over?

Shadowhunters, Season 3, Episode 1: On Infernal Ground

It is time for the fourth season of Shadowhunters. And it has done very well, it has garnered a large audience, it has a large number of fans, it has a budget. It can definitely afford to put some of the main characters through acting classes.

Last season Clary decided to use her angelic wish so she could continue her quasi incestual relationship with Jace and at the same time a big scary demon woman, Lilith, came back to save her evil demon son, Clary’s actual brother (who also wants to do incest with Clary because this is the Mortal Instruments and we have a theme), and guy who can act, Sebastian. Magnus decided that the 5 minutes of screen time he and Alec have together mean it’s perfectly ok to fuck over his people and continue to be a good little servant to the Downworld, while Luke runs his pack in his own attempt to be a good servant and do fuck all for his actual people; Maia joins him in being the second in command of not actually doing fuck all for their actual people. His partner on the police force has also found out about the monsters out there. Meanwhile the fairy queen is out of her ever loving mind and allying with Magic Nazi Valentine because if at least some of the Downworld weren’t dubiously evil to a ridiculous degree, Luke and Magnus’s subservience would be even more nauseating. Simon is her guest because of that whole daylight walking vampire thing. Izzy and Raphael are… just… there. Doing stuff. And by stuff I mean moping, not to be confused with anything actually meaningful.

And every experienced adult Shadowhunter who has ever lived have all checked out to, I dunno, play bingo or something, and are quite content to let these over-dramatic teens and early 20s run everything.

Lo, we have summed up the last season.

And we open with Lillith - who is either covered in tar or this season is going all in in really really bad blackface. I would say the former is the obvious choice but, y’know, Shadowhunters. She wants to wake up her dead evil son so he can return her naked tar embrace. I say again, incest is a thing on this show

It’s Clary’s big special day where everyone gathers around and says how special she is. Which is basically every day, but in this case she’s being officially honoured as a full Shadowhunter and no longer in  training despite the complete hot minute she’s actually spent doing that training. This is a day to rejoice apparently, with side issues with Alec who is kind of pissy that Jace died and both Jace and Clary are lying about it. They’re lying because that wish she used to resurrect Jace? That’s the only wish that nagel will grant. Could have used it for world peace. Could have used it to end world hunger. Could have used it for infinite clean power. Could have used it to forever ban pineapple on pizza. But nah, she resurrected Jace

She’d do it again in what would be a romantic moment except acting lessons are not in the budget alas.

What we do have instead are more convoluted unnecessary angst. So despite both dreams and the reality of them both rolling around half naked, Jace keeps having dreams about him murdering Clary because of his evil brother/3rd spoke of the incest love triangle. Because we need more angst

Clary also goes to Izzy, the new weapons master - seriously are there no Shadowhunters over the age of 30? She goes to pick her preferred weapon which is some kind of mystic ritual. She picks two long knives. And later learns from Luke that one is Valentine’s and the other Jocelyn’s because she has epic light and darkness in her. Or she’s just good with long knives

Can you imagine life as Clary? She had corn flakes this morning, with almond milk. Jocelyn liked cornflakes and lo there is light in her; but Valentine had almond milk. This is a momentous sign.

Magnus and Alec reunite, saying hello across a large room because this is the affection they show. Magnus has lost his job as High Warlock on account of not actually giving a shit about his people and constantly siding with the shadowhunters. He pretends not to care, being far happier selling stuff.

The Magicians, Season 3, Episode 10: The Art of the Deal

Tensions are still high between Alice and Quentin - she is super angry that Quentin doesn’t trust her - especially since he trusts Kady (which comes with a swipe at Kady’s drug use); Quentin argues that he doesn’t know what Alice actually wants because she’s been so changeable

And Alice has an epic, awesome rant about how she is also a complex, emotionally hurting person like Quentin - and excuse her if she hasn’t been all focused and consistent after losing her father (to say nothing of rebuilding herself after the niffin-ness): this is especially on point because this kind of emotional collapse and self-loathing and ambivalence is something Quentin has had from the very beginning. Her rant here is a demand that Quentin allow her the same level of emotional complexity that he himself has. And it’s perfect.

Julia also has her reservations about Alice but, ultimately, Quentin points out they need her (probably emphasised by the musical unity key last episode). So he’s off questing - but Julia isn’t. She can’t leave the fairies yet

So she recruits Fenn who is learning the universal awesome language of emojis and still really pissed off at the fairies and not really eager to help. But as Julia asks - how does she feel about slavery?

This is another powerful moment on Magicians, you can hate someone, even have a very real genuine grudge against them, but still find the abuse they suffer to be unacceptable and not celebrate their inexcusable suffering

The problem is they still don’t know how to remove the collars from the fairies. They confront Irene and tell her all about the fairies and that they know they’re there - but craftily present the idea that they have a fairy problem and need help subduing them. Fenn’s hatred of fairies helps sell this. Irene thought they had the last of the fairies and is super excited at the thought of more. She introduces them to evil Uncle Edwin. And we know he’s evil, he’s played by Michael Hogan. He is always evil - always always a sinister older man. It’s a rule.

He has a collar for them but won’t tell them how it works - he does show off the fairy he’s owned since he was 16: a fairy that has been enslaved to the family for 400 years. He also says the way to remove the collars is with a machine they have,

Freeing the fairies isn’t easy since Skye can’t show her magic to the others and they don’t believe her when she describes her power. So Fenn has an idea - let’s show the fairies someone scarier

The fairy queen. Who reveals their history - fairies used to live on Earth but were hunted to extinction by human magicians (she never knew there were still fairies left on earth). Julia says she never knew and the fairy queen has the truly amazing, I’m-gonna-frame-it come back “short memory is the privilege of the oppressor”.

She’s worried about being lured to Earth but Fenn snarls about all the shit the fairies did to her and how obviously she wouldn’t be here by choice. Honestly I would take this as meaning she has a very good reason to lure her to Earth but the fairy queen finds this convincing. Especially when Fenn makes an awesome appeal as a mother on the part of the fairies. She even agrees to wear the collar so they can sneak in: reassured that Julia the God-touched can protect her. She also asks what julia gets out of all this, why help the fairies and Julia has an excellent speech about doing something good with her power.

With the fairy queen on display and the story of a whole town infested with fairies, they happily ingratiate themselves with the McCallisters - and the whole clan has gathered to talk business (which seems to involved a huge number of smushed up fairies). There the queen is put in a cage with the other fairies - and is duly horrified at the condition they’re in: she has an excellent speech about how fairies are the inspiration of the gods and is deeply upset to see fairies lower their head before them. Oh and she also promises a horrible death for the McAllisters once they have the collars off

The Magicians, season 3, Episode 6: Do You Like Teeth

Alice and Julia have decided to go through with the plan to transfer magic from Julia to Alice - and Alice is almost painfully excited. They’re going to use a repurposed hedge witch spell that originally was used to steal magic.

They start  - and are interrupted by Penny who attracts their attention by possessing a singing fish.

This is not the most dignified way to communicate.

He warns them that he’s seen this before - and it killed the witches in question. But it’s also Fogg’s spell - yes Dean Henry Fogg.

He’s not doing so well - and he’s not exactly happy they’ve been keeping Julia’s magic from him but, as they point out, he’s been very drunk all the time. He doesn’t deny this or make excuses - because he’s a magicless magician, a Dean without a school, and an unemployed blind black man in an even more prejudiced America (it turns out they were using magic to “increase tolerance 38% which Henry is already scathing about and clearly unimpressed by how little tolerance that actually amounted to). In other words, Henry has plenty of reasons to be drunk.

He does tell them about the spell - and that they need the flesh of a magical creature. Specifically an incubus. Which means they go to an incubus to ask to use his penis

And I was all ready to roll my eyes because this is freaking Magicians but at least someone on the writer team decided that they’d used up their quota of forced sexual situations for the next 11 centuries and backed off. Turns out that the Incubus isn’t into sex, feeds on stress, and is happy to lend them his regrowing tail.

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

Catherine Helstone is determined to find her brother. He has been missing for some time on his mission to bring Christianity to the fae of Arcadia. She’s finally received permission to follow him

The land of Arcadia is like nothing she imagined, with mystery upon mystery to uncover and cryptic inhabitants who never seem to let her get close to the truth. Even finding her brother does little to solve the constant mystery of the castle they’re confined to, the world that is so alien and the inhabitants that do little to encourage their presence

Laon is convinced that the way to learn the truth - and bring the fae to Christianity - is to gain access to the interior. But to do that requires the favour of the alien and frightening Queen Mab.

This is not an easy book to read.

Not because it’s offensive, or badly written or otherwise broken. But because it’s intelligent, it has layers and to truly appreciate it you need to sit and think and examine and explore every line, the implications, the nuances and the thinking. A decent grounding or interest in theology wouldn’t go amiss either (which, honestly, I don’t have, but still appreciated the wrangling over holy writ and lots of awkward questions and wrangling).

The foundation for this book is less a story and more an exploration. Oh we have lots of Catherine’s journey to Arcadia, her living there and the relationship with her brother Laon (more on that later) but the main point of this is exploration and thought. What is faerie, how alien is it: and I have to say here that I have rarely read a depiction of faerie as alien, as fanciful, as weird and as downright creepy as I’ve seen here. From the nature of the individual fae, the the bizarre sun and moon to distances being measured in dreams and epiphanies to the seasons and how things change - it’s utterly perfectly alien. The use of salt on the food, the nature of changelings and Mab and her terrifying, ethereal court: the aesthetics, the theme, the whole feel of this world is excellent. It’s worth reading this book fro this alone.

And to this we add the missionaries - Laon and Catherine, so utterly out of their depth, desperately trying to apply their faith to a world that seems utterly unrelated top it, trying to find the secrets from past missionaries, trying to understand the very nature of the fae and faerie. Complete with twist at the end and excellent machinations from the fae queen

Drawing Dead (Dana McIntyre Must Die #1) by S.M. Reine

Dana McIntyre has always had an issue with vampires, even more than your average vampire hunter. They have history and she holds a grudge

So she does not take being bitten and turning into a vampire well. She fully intends to die before she turns. But not before taking all of Las Vegas’s hundreds of vampires down with her.

There is a possible cure- but is Dana willing to risk that? Can Vegas survive without Dana? And can it survive her vengeance?

I am now becoming ever more intimidated and by S.M. Reine’s world - because she has written about 300 series each of which have eleventy million books in it, all of which are connected and linked to a vast meta plot and world changing activity - and I AM SO BEHIND. So finding this new series my reactions were both lots of glee and a kind of gibbering terror. I will catch up with all her books! I will!

I was going to skip this until I caught up. But the cover. You know I’m not resisting that cover, right?

That said, despite the utter terrifying vastness that is S.M. Reine’s excellent world building and the truly massive amount of events that have passed, this book still works on its own even if you’re unfamiliar with the vastness. It does refer to major events in the larger world - events I’m only vaguely aware of - but this isn’t a vast world changing story. This is the story of Dana, Las Vegas and activities there. This history matters in terms of how the supernatural took over, how people were transformed by the Event and how much changed - but the details of it are not remotely necessary to tell Dana’s story. Ok, the gods thing? The gods thing lost me. I definitely need some severe elaboration on the whole deity thing.

That doesn’t mean the world isn’t amazing and broad and rich and weird. With the very conventional supernatural vampires and wereanimals, but throwing in some truly terrifying and alien fae with a very different take on anything I’ve seen before. And the cutest orc you ever did see

In fact let’s hit Dana and her wife Penny. First of all wife - yes, Dana is a lesbian, yes we have a lesbian protagonist, no she’s not “lesbian for Penny only” she is attracted to women and definitely loves Penny. Their relationship is not in any way fairy tale - there’s a lot of conflict and difficult there: but it’s down to Penny’s previous trauma as a victim of a serial killer, it’s Dana’s obsessive hatred of vampires, it’s her drinking too much - there’s a lot of complexities which make Dana not an easy woman to live with or love but they definitely do love.

The Librarians, Season 4, Episode 8 and the Hidden Sanctuary

Opening prologue: a boy abandoned and alone in the woods happen to find a fairy which he frees…

Now to the Library - and Cassandra having a terrible nightmare/memory of a recent mission in Ecuador which nearly went badly because everyone was relying in Cassandra and she panicked and had a meltdown.

More terrifying - Jenkins is losing his vision and reminding us of his mortality...

Jenkins encourages her to talk because Jenkins is made of awesome. She faced death and panicked - and though she has faced death before it was the certainty of it. She was terminally ill, she knew she was going to die soon. Knowing that she could die on missions meant less to her when she didn’t have much life left, when the possibility of a long, normal life was completely out of the question… now it’s possible to have that long life she’s afraid to risk that. And that fear stops her thinking

Jenkins sympathises, as a man who has had his own life so tragically shortened (nooooooooo!!!!!) has spent time reflecting on his own life, what his purpose is and what he wants to do and what he wants to be. He doesn’t share his own answers (immortal and around forever as a pillar of endless awesomeness) but suggests Cassandra do the same.

She does - and decides to take a sabbatical to the normal world. As we’ve seen in previous episodes, Cassandra doesn’t know what this means. She’s never had a normal life - she needs to experience this if she wants to make an informed decision.

Eve freaks out. And it’s perfect. From seeing her team dissolve, to the abandonment she already feels after Flynn to a HUGE dollop of mother-figure-empty-nest-syndrome, Eve is not remotely happy with this. But Jake and Ezekiel are much more supportive

So she chooses a town that is the safest in America. There she finds… an improbably nice and peaceful with dubious barbershop and creepily friendly town. I would be running but Cassandra fits right in. She rents a room from Karla (who has a son called Freddie who is far far more sensible than anyone else in the town). She gets a job improbably easily as a librarian and quickly fits in in this impossibly perfect town, taking up baking, public events, quilting and all to a superior degree because she’s a Librarian and awesome. It’s in the job description.

The Magicians, Season 3, Episode 1: The Tale of the Seven Keys

Last season in between the train wrecks of rape, misogyny, homophobia and general dear-gods-whyyyyy that so characterises Magicians we left with a number of cliffhangers

The Olde Gods, parents of lesser gods like Ember and Umber are Not Amused by their kids being murdered decided to strip the world of magic. This made Brakebills much safer, much more boring and much less useful (unless there’s a career in theoretical magic studies?). Except Julia may have some sparks. I can think of several theories why this is. Some of them involve me hitting things with axes

Also Alice, after her little sojourn as a nifilin may have made enemies. And Fillory is full of elves being all graceful and creepy and indolent. And Penny works for the Library. He may be dying but I’m not even sure if he was

And we open with Quentin and Julia discussing why she has random specks of magic she can’t control or harness; suspecting they were either left by the Goddess Persephone when she restored Julia’s shade after her son raped Julia. Or because Renard raped her. This would be the axe moment - let us have a season where Julia’s power and ability does not come from her rape.

Julia is losing hope and despairing but Quentin is determined to do something - and be Julia’s sidekick (adding to the growing theme that whether he’s the protagonist or not, Quentin ain’t that special). Quentin even wants to get in touch with the old gods to find out more about magic

Julia, with her greater and more horrific experience of gods, is duly suspicious of this. Not least of which because they have no real idea how to do this - though they get help from a random source, Josh, the side character

Josh connects them with a god - Bacchus -who tends to show up at parties and then turn them to the extreme (honestly I am disappointed Magicians because this party is REALLY tame for something Bacchus is involved in). Josh gets in - but Quentin and Julia have to prove they’re not boring. Which means drinking and cringing dance moves. Maybe Bacchus just doesn’t have the best taste

He also has little inclination to talk about gods or magic - but to do shots and take drugs causing Quentin to hallucinate about Alice (who apparently left, unable to deal with lack of magic and her issues with Quentin) and Julia to continue to struggle with PTSD. She also comforts Josh in a really excellent scene in which he talks about what magic utterly means to him and how devastated he is without magic - to provide some comfort that magic is still around

Quentin freaks out about her showing off magic - but Julia can’t not help. Because she can’t fall into the trap of not trusting anyone again. She can’t live like that despite her experiences. Though he sadly points out she is literally showing off the biggest magic the world has left.

Bewitching Bedlam (Bewitching Bedlam #1) by Yasmine Galenorn

Maddy is busy preparing for her grand opening of her bed and breakfast. She has a lot to do - and she does not need the spiteful machinations of Ralph Greyhoof - a local satyr and fellow hotelier - who is looking to sabotage the competition.

But no-one expected the rivalry to turn to actual murder - when a witch body turns up in Maddy’s back garden. Maddy doesn’t buy it, there is far more going on  here than a business rivalry - and hotel guests are not worth killing over

This book is a lot of fun - the characters are fun, the world is fun, the story is fun. But it’s not just fun, it has a lot of decent depth to it, especially in the characterisation and it all has a lot of substance to it which makes it fun, but definitely not fluff

Most of the other characters are excellent - Maddy’s history, her past relationships, her moments of running wild, her charging around as a vampire hunter - all of that is very present with Maddy and with Sandy who both shared this history. Franny, the frustrated ghost who cannot interact with the world but oh so badly wants to. Having someone who genuinely dislikes Maddy and is definitely a rival but having the characters recognise that  just being an enemy doesn’t make them completely evil. I like the levels there, the fact we don’t have enemy=completely irredeemably evil or that anyone who opposes the protagonist must be completely without any positive qualities. I like that

This applies to a fair amount of the plot - I like the whole complexity around the vampires, I like that the most obvious target gets questioned repeatedly. I like that we also have Linda, the head of their coven and mayor of the town who has also a lot of levels in her involvement of the plot which is hard to simply say good or bad. It’s not that everything is complex or elaborate - it isn’t convoluted at all. It’s not hard to follow, or difficult or following unnecessary twists for the sake of it. But more the characters simply are not simplistic, even enemies are multi-dimensional and as such so is the plot line, discerning actual motives and the investigation around that.