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• Anticlimax Boss: Lawrence Wilson from Kitty Takes a Holiday.
• Broken Base: Individual books in the series are Love It or Hate It for some fans—many dislike book 5 due to it being all about a wedding, no pack involvement, Kitty becoming a Distressed Damsel, 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.
• Complete Monster: Carl, by the time of his death in book 4. Also the hunters in book 7, who not only set up a fake reality show for the express purpose of trapping, terrorizing, and murdering a whole slew of supernatural "monsters" (and then televising the results, both from a sense of pride and to show the world "how it's done"), but they include people who shouldn't even be there—harmless psychics like Jeffrey Miles and Tina, an atheist (on the grounds that his convincing people the supernatural doesn't exist helps maintain The Masquerade so the "monsters" can keep living unmolested and plotting against the human world), and another completely human talk show host like Kitty. They also murder completely innocent human techs who were part of the fake show in order to hide their crimes and isolate the victims, and make each of the supernaturals record heartfelt messages to their loved ones which would be played as their final words after they were murdered. And, of course, maliciously enjoyed killing each one of them. Death and lycanthropy was far too good for them.
  • Carson from "Kitty's Zombie New Year". He uses a drug he got off the Internet to turn his girlfriend into a zombie slave who would obey his every word, her soul trapped in their engagement ring (and her mind, quite possibly, irrevocably damaged). His reason? Because she wanted him to move away with her, and was going to leave him if he wouldn't.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: 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 could—and she still does so today. Makes the death of Bradley (and vampirism of Emma) much more of a Tear Jerker.
• 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 Unfortunate Implications associated with this particular plotline...
• Magnificent Bastard: Ned is the rare heroic (or anti-heroic) version of this.
• Magnificent Bitch: And Anastasia is the heroic (or anti-heroic) version of this.
• 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.
    • Well, she was trying to kill him and vice versa and she doesn't regret trying to do that. Later, her Wolf side instinctively wanted to protect him from a vampire, but she suppressed the urge because he didn't deserve it. And in an earlier book she offered to turn a family member, so her own personal line is a bit blurry. A bit of Angst was natural and expected in the situation in book 7, but it's nowhere near a What the Hell, Hero? moment.
    • Never said it was. The implication was that having crossed the line once, albeit for a very justifiable reason, if in order to stop the forces of darkness/chaos Kitty is forced to keep doing such things, eventually she may fully cross the line and have a true What the Hell, Hero? moment in the future. She probably won't do so since she's the Hero, but it seems likely the author will address the issue and show some Angst regarding it.
• 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 whatever he is planning 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 Anticlimax 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 Anticlimax 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.
• 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 Crowning Moment of Heartwarming—she gets quite choked up and literally ends up in tears herself.
  • Kitty saying goodbye to Rick at the end of Rocks the House.
• Unfortunate Implications: One of the supernaturals killed in Kitty's House of Horrors is black—and he is the first to die, other than Dorian. Also, 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.
  • Veronica Sevilla, the Anne Rice knockoff from the first book, says her vampire son "would not have the life she envisioned for him" and that she had reconciled herself to the life he did have, "if one could call it life". This is...rather jarring, considering the real Anne Rice's son is gay (and she fully supports him even in spite of her return to Christianity).
• 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.
  • Iron Woobie: Sergeant Tyler.