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  • Anti-Climax Boss: Lawrence Wilson from Kitty Takes a Holiday.
  • Ass Pull: To some readers, the reveal that Angelo had joined Roman was this, although it was foreshadowed all along in his constant cries of being too weak to be Master of Denver, and in the ominous comments he makes to her before she leaves for Albuquerque.
  • Broken Base: Individual books in the series are divisive for some fans—many dislike book 5 due to it being all about a wedding, no pack involvement, Kitty becoming a Damsel in Distress, and a Deus ex machina ending; some feel Kitty in book 6, despite being more proactive, was still depending too much on others for help; some loved the episodic nature of books 7 and 9, others hated it; some thought book 7 was dark, powerful, and suspenseful while others found it flat and predictable. But the biggest divide of them all, it seems, is between those who love Kitty with Ben and those who want her hooked up with Cormac.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The moment where Gemma is confused by Kitty's The Picture of Dorian Gray joke, and Anastasia realizes she's too young to get the reference so she'll "have a book for you to read later", becomes heartbreaking before the book is even over, as she'll never get the chance thanks to being burned into ashes by the rising sun.
  • Heartwarming Moments:
    • When Kitty learns that all of Alette's human servants, the cops on her payroll, and the photos and paintings in her house are her extended family, whom she originally became a vampire to protect and give the best possible lives she couldand she still does so today. Makes the death of Bradley (and vampirism of Emma) much more of a Tear Jerker.
    • At the end of Steals the Show, when Kitty is feeling alone, rejected, and despairing because of the reactions to her keynote address, the pep talk one of her callers gives her is very much this: "Keep doing what you've always done. Helping people. Don't ever forget that."
    • In book twelve, the moment when Kitty finally lays eyes on the spirit of the first Regina Luporum, and later when she gets the police sketch artist to draw a picture for her.
    • David's phone call home to his parents at the end of "Il Est Né", mirrored by Kitty's call to her own parents.
    • At the end of Low Midnight, Amelia apologizes to Cormac for possessing him, hoping that she didn't damage him or "alter what you would have been without me." Not only does Cormac think to himself that what he would have been was dead, still in prison, or still a He Who Fights Monsters bounty hunter, he says, "You being here means that whenever I die, however it happens, if it's going up against Roman or something else that gets us—I won't be alone." And he takes her hand.
  • Ho Yay: When Kitty enters the Band of Tiamat's suite, she discovers "the place smelled thickly of sex. As if—what else were a bunch of hunky men supposed to do when they weren't onstage?" With the band being all male and the female assistants for the show not living with them (or being lycanthropes), this rather strongly implies at least bisexuality among the band. You know, the Religion of Evil promoting chaos and blood sacrifice. As if there wasn't enough Squickiness associated with this particular plotline...
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Carl starts out as just violent and possessive, but moves up to sexual assault, rape, and eventually torture. And murder, in the case of poor Jenny.
    • Also, as of book 7 Kitty herself has crossed her own personal line, having turned someone into a lycanthrope against their will, something she swore she'd never do. Considering the fact she came close several times to losing herself in the Wolf and even harming her friends and allies, she may be right to worry.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Plenty. The scenes of the crimes where James was leaving his victims (which are also an in-story version of Nausea Fuel for Kitty). The skinwalker. Whatever is in Grant's Disappearing Box. The seance at New Moon (particularly what they see and hear on the footage later, in the fire...). What happens to the Ifrit's victims. The moment where Roman takes control of Kitty and forces the Change on her. The entire suspenseful, tension-wracked slasher-movie plot of House of Horrors. Hundun, god of chaos. The Maze under San Francisco. And of course, Roman himself and what he had planned for the end of the Long Game...
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: Kitty Takes a Holiday is ostensibly about fighting a curse, but the major plot thread running through the book is Kitty's Rescue Romance with Ben It even displaces the main plot by the end- The Man Behind the Man turns out to be an Anti-Climax Boss, and the final "battle" is essentially Kitty and Ben vs. Ben's issues with his lycanthropy. There is a bit more to it than that, since facing said Anti-Climax Boss and obtaining info about the skinwalker is essential to clearing Cormac's name, the face-off with the skinwalker is actually quite intense and climactic, and helping Ben deal with his lycanthropy, and not be Driven to Suicide is a dramatic and well-written character arc in its own right. But the romance does take up more room in the plot than it probably should.
  • Squick: The suggestion that Balthasar attempts to seduce and sacrifice Kitty either because he's male (we never see a female lycanthrope do such a thing) or because he's a lycanthrope (read: furry) is disturbing to say the least. The seduction and sacrifice scenes are also a little too S&M for comfort (and this is lampshaded by Kitty herself), while her later private meeting with the Band of Tiamat in which she is constantly surrounded by either purring, nuzzling cats or fawning, clinging men has very unsettling echoes of either an incipient orgy or gang rape.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Kitty and Ben had no romantic interest in each other before Ben gets turned into a werewolf, but they're married quickly thereafter. It even gets lampshaded by Kitty, who admits that despite how much she's in love with Ben she really doesn't know him all that well. The two of them then start working to try and build a deeper relationship together.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • Right from the beginning the death of T.J. is this, as is Jenny in book 4, but the slew of deaths in House of Horrors ramp it up to eleven. Especially traumatic are the deaths of Ariel, Gemma, and Jeffrey Miles.
    • Kitty talking down Sergeant Tyler is an incredible emotional wringer, especially right on the heels of Walters' Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Kitty's meeting with Ned, and realizing he knew Shakespeare, so that she in turn had a connection to him and could ask anything about the life and times of one of her literary heroes, comes across as a combination of this and a Heartwarming Moment —she gets quite choked up and literally ends up in tears herself.
    • Kitty saying goodbye to Rick at the end of Rocks the House.
  • The Un-Twist: David turning out not to be the serial killer in "Il Est Né" was pretty much this, since the Coincidental Broadcast and the set-up with his uncontrolled Changes and lack of memory of his actions was rather too obvious; if he really had turned out to be the killer, that would have been more surprising (and out-of-character for Vaughn, since Darker and Edgier moments aside, she seems to not be quite that cruel to nice, good, or heroic characters—at least not until book 7). Who the killer really did turn out to be was a nice twist, though.
  • Values Dissonance: 20-something Kitty often laments that her "normal" life came to an end when she became a Werewolf. However, she often emphasizes her family being white, middle-class, suburban, and well-off and how she would have gone to a good college, met an affluent husband, and settled down in a comfortable suburban house with a white picket fence and golden retriever. (There is no guarantee, of course, that she would have gotten such things, but the fact she assumes it likely is still telling, even if sometimes she seems to be joking or self-deprecating about it.) Given how increasingly unattainable these things are to 20-somethings in a post-Great Recession era (particularly college and home ownership), Kitty's comfy pre-werewolf life can come across less as "normal" and more as a loss of privilege. (Especially since she often encounters vampires and werewolves from actual impoverished and minority backgrounds; to her credit, she does at least sympathize with them and do her best to help however she can, but the lack of self-examination is still there.)
  • Wangst: Kitty often laments the loss of her "normal" lifestyle that amounts to being a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, which can make her come across as a bit of a privileged whiner, especially since she often encounters were-creatures from actual impoverished and minority backgrounds.
  • The Woobie: Estelle in book 1, Jenny in book 4. The latter is especially poignant as a What Could Have Been for Kitty herself. Karin in book 10 also counts. Also, David in "Il Est Né."


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