Huh. I really enjoyed this book despite myself. 
 And by that, I mean, it's been sitting on my Kobo waiting to be read for a while now. And I picked it up today out of sheer boredom, with little to no expectations. Or well, I may have expected the worst. I've sort of been skirting the edge of the Urban Fantasy genre for a while now, and was never really sucked in. Despite the best intentions and some interesting premises. 
 So I guess I sort of expected this to go down similarly to Magic Bites. General amusement, but overall unimpressive. 
 I'm sort of glad I was wrong. 
 Now listen, I understand that Mac gets (in my opinion) a bizarre amount of flak for being into clothes and pink and nail polish. But you know what? I actually found that really refreshing. There was none of this fake, unrelateable, "strong female character" bullshit. Cough Kate Daniels cough. Mac is femme, a little flighty and by her own admission not particularly smart or strong or driven. But she loves her family and her distraught over her sister's death is real. And even though she's self-depreciating, she is driven--driven to find out what really happened to her sister. 
 And sure, she makes some stupid mistakes--but who wouldn't? She does the best with the information she has and goes with it. She pushes, she pries, she draws her own conclusions (sometimes hastily). She's an interesting and flawed character. And I really enjoyed her. It makes me excited to see where this all will go. 
 And it's a credit to the worldbuilding that I'm really intrigued for more. 
 So, uh, I may or may not be about to go out and hastily purchase book two.