Review: THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND WOLVES by Alethea Kontis

"Fate only clears the path. How you walk it is up to you."
~THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND WOLVES

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND WOLVES may be part of the Nocturne Falls Universe created by Kristen Painter, but you don't have to read that series to read this. The characters are brand-new, and the title focuses on the teens living in the town that celebrates Halloween 365 days a year rather than the adults.

If you love paranormal novels, you'll really enjoy this! If you're not a huge PN reader (I'm not, either!), you still may love it because it's more focused on mythology and relationships than it is about "being paranormal."

Alethea Kontis inputs her trademark mixing of mythology and lore into her latest offering. Kai Xanthopoulos is Greek and living in a town of paranormal beings. It's commonplace to rub elbows with werewolves, fairies, witches, etc. Kai is Greek, and hasn't come into her abilities yet--though she will begin to as the novel progresses, and while they're super spoilery, they're also super cool! Kai's life is uneventful until the day Finn Kincaid blows into town. He's a werewolf on the run, cursed with bad luck. When he sees Kai, he can't help but kiss her, despite having never met her before. His existence starts bringing out Kai's powerful abilities, and if she can figure out who she is and learn how to control her manifesting powers, maybe she can break Finn's curse and figure out why she feels so drawn to him.

I gulped this book down in one sitting and immediately wanted more. Kontis has created an intriguing world and introduced us to already-endearing new characters. There are enough loose threads that I could see her returning to Nocturne Falls and giving us more books about these characters, because I'm just not ready to say goodbye to them yet. There are so many spoilery things I can't talk about, which makes this review hard, but I really like the way all the magical and mystical elements were handled. It was a great blend of contemporary and fantasy and paranormal, and it never bored me. In fact, I kind of wanted to see if Ivy had a story in the original series because her character intrigued me so much. I'm also wondering if any other residents of Nocturne Falls that we encountered were from Kristen Painter's original series. While I never felt left out or like I was missing anything because Kontis introduced the world so well, it did make me wonder what I'd missed out on and consider coming back to play with the original series! When Kontis published FISH OUT OF WATER this past fall as part of the Barefoot Bay line, I had no desire to read any other books in that world because the surrounding characters didn't stand out to me. I can already tell that Painter has well-fleshed out characters and an intriguing world (I mean, seriously, a town that celebrates Halloween 365 days a year and has residents who have NO CLUE that paranormal beings live among them? SO INTRIGUING!!!) because they carried over into THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND WOLVES so well and so naturally. Nothing felt forced or added in for no reason.

While I'm normally not a fan of insta-love romances, the one between Kai and Finn really works here. There are REASONS that these two have the connection they do, and since Kontis has that fairy tale-vibe in all of her writing, it just works. I loved all the Greek asides inputted throughout the book, as well as the way Finn is always quoting Hamlet. A guy who loves literature and has memorized the classics? Yes, please!!! There are also a lot of great secondary characters, but the stand-out has to be Owen, who....well, SPOILERS, but I definitely would love to see these books continue and to see more of him.

Overall, THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND WOLVES was a fun, fast, engaging read that was hard to put down. I'm already packing my suitcase because I want to take another trip to Nocturne Falls VERY soon.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND WOLVES by Alethea Kontis was published by Sugar Skull Book son January 24, 2017.