Overall, I enjoyed this book as a cozy read, but it had its flaws. The relationship between Seth and Cassandra felt sweet, but the enemies-to-lovers dynamic wasn't fully realized. The world-building in Hollow Brook was interesting but underdeveloped. The story mainly focuses on Cassie and Seth, with limited insight into other characters. While their romantic feelings were evident, the development of their relationship felt lacking. Additionally, Cassie's confidence as a plus-sized character could have been better portrayed. Despite its strengths, there were areas that could have been improved, particularly in character development and execution of the enemies-to-lovers trope.

I absolutely loved this book! It’s a cozy friends to enemies back to friends with a faint beauty and the beast retelling. The main characters were charming and sweet, making the extraordinary things in their life feel more magical. Their chemistry was excellent, with great spicy moments. And the FMC got to live out my dream with a talking raccoon companion.

First, thank you NetGalley for my ARC copy.
I don’t read a lot of paranormal novels but I tend to enjoy a good werewolf story. However, as soon as I started this book something was off to me. I realized pretty quickly it was overwritten and the POV was wrong. I normally appreciate books written in 3rd but that did not work for this at all. If you are a fan of Mariana Zapata, where the FMC rants on and on for paragraphs, this story may be for you but also keep in mind it’s also in 3rd person which unfortunately made it that much worse.
I made it through the novel but felt lukewarm about the “mystery,” the folklore, even the issues that were keeping the couple apart.
I didn’t care about anything beyond the main characters dealing with their traumas (and there were tons), finally getting these characters together and squashing their misunderstanding. All that was resolved and dealt with reasonably but again, lukewarm.

One thing I will say is this book stuck with me when it was done. I didn’t hate it but I think my disappointment was higher than expected because there was potential. High school secret crush on best friend, gone terribly wrong second chance romance, with werewolves and secret powers seemed like a really fun premise and book to get lost in but the entire time I read I was confused by how tedious and confusing it felt to read.
Also after finding out this is the author that wrote When Grumpy Met Sunshine I was even sadder because now the book with the cute title and cover had to be taken off my TBR list.

This book's characters include a group of young men (who turn out to be werewolves) and a young woman who is a witch. They go to high school together. The young woman is chubby and the young men make fun of her. They humiliate her so much that she leaves town as soon as she can and doesn't come back until she needs to clear out her grandmother's house. Then she meets back up with Seth, one of the boys who tormented her the most, who used to be her friend. That made it all the more painful when he turned on her and humiliated her. There is romance but it takes a long time to get to it.

The book was very easy to read, but I did think that it was too repetitive and too long. I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher St. Martin's Press via NetGalley, and voluntarily read and reviewed it.

Thanks so much to netgalley and St. Martin's for the arc of this one in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I thought the idea was cute and I loved the cover. However, I don't feel like there was much of a story and it just felt very smutty to me. I thought I was getting Gilmore Girl vibes but it didn't feel like that to me.

I don't mind smut with a story but this one was lacking in the story department.

I hope others love this one!

He’s a werewolf with golden retriever energy.

Best friends to mortal enemies
Then to
Acquaintances to friends?

He was her best friend until he betrayed her and she left town. Now she is back and he’s continuously, showing up at her door without an explanation.
What could he want from her? She doesn’t want to forgive him but he’s honesty and regret of how he treated her in high school makes it hard to not forgive him.
Can the be friends again or even maybe more ??

3.5/5
A newly manifested witch reconnects with her best friend turned mortal enemy who happens to be a werewolf.
The prose was very informal, repetitive in places.
It was hard to connect with either the main characters as I found their miscommunications to be frustrating.
Magic was interesting and a witchy familiar appears later in the story. Sentient kitchen items were funny.
A pretty average spicy paranormal romance overall.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

2.5 stars

I think this had the potential to be a good story but sadly the execution wasn’t there. I enjoyed the idea of a werewolf/witch ex-friends to lovers romance and all of the supernatural elements. I did think there were some funny moments, but they were overshadowed by the constant attempts at witty banter. A lot of the dialogue was just awkward and cringey and unfortunately the spice was too. There was really only a hint of a plot that I wish had been focused on more instead of all of the repetitive interactions.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for the ARC!

2.5 stars

How to Help a Hungry Werewolf by Charlotte Stein has been compared to What We Do in the Shadows and Gilmore Girls — two of my favorite shows ever. I had high hopes going into this one - but unfortunately it was not one of my favorites. I found the interactions to be awkward and cringey — but I will say that there are some funny moments and the connection that the MC has with her late grandmother resonated with me on a deep level. I thought that the smut would save the story but it actually made it worse. I found myself feeling second hand embarrassment throughout the novel and it was a struggle to get through.

I don’t want to negatively rant about this book so I’ll keep my review brief - thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC in exchange for my feedback. I would try more from this author in the future, but I wouldn’t continue with this series. I think I would recommend this to the younger fresh out of high school crowd. Writing a book is hard so I give props to the author for making her dreams come true - she’s been dreaming of writing this for over a decade and I hope that she finds a good fanbase who appreciates her work more than I did.

After the first few pages I refused to continue reading this book. I did not like the the bully trope or the fat shaming. Given that I DNF’d before chapter one was over, I will not rate it on Goodreads

Cassandra returns home to take care of her grandmother's house only to run into her ex-best-friend-turned-nemesis Seth. Add a bunch of supernatural elements and shake well.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I love the world building. The magic system is interesting and innovative. I love that Cassandra's powers manifest as an ancestral knowing. My main problem with this book was that both characters are manic-pixie-dream-girlish and their conversations felt like over-dramatic chittering between pre-teen girls. There was too much quip and not enough substance. As always, your mileage may vary.

🔆| After her grandma passed away, our leading lady Cassandra returns to Hollow Brook to clear out her house. What she doesn’t expect to find there is her ex-bestie from high school Seth! After fat shaming her (allegedly an accident) which had caused her to embarrass herself in front of the whole school, it's not exactly like she is pumped to see him again. This leads us on a cozy spicy adventure as history unravels itself, the present also brings the fact that Seth is a werewolf, Cassandra might be a witch, and a talking raccoon named Pod who drinks tea.

🎀| Let me start by saying, they ate this up with that cover. I am obsessed with it and it's stunning! Now I love a good paranormal romance and thought this would be up my alley but the info dump at the start and the fact that all the characters including both MCs were either from high school or still living in the memory of high school put me off. I did go into this expecting it to be goofy and while I did love some aspects of it overall it was a weekend read, not the best thing I have ever read but certainly not the worst. I also fully gave an extra star for the talking raccoon!

Thank you to the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC via NetGalley before the publishing date and for my first ARC! This ARC was kindly given to me for an honest review.

But this book wasn’t for me sadly I just couldn’t get past the fat shaming aspect and the writing style wasn’t keeping me hooked.

With that being said I still think everyone should give it a chance we all have different opinions/taste!

Super cute story. It took me a while to get into it as Cassie and Seth would at ramble on circle around conversations and literally talk about nothing. Fortunately the chemistry between them kept me going, they were just too cute to give up on. Once the story hit the halfway mark it went from 0-100 with the spice. Good lord (fans herself).
Would love to see where Charlotte Stein takes us in this universe, it has great bones.

2.5/5 stars. I really didn’t like this book and I knew I wasn’t going to within the first chapter. I almost DNF’d this one, and I never not finish books. The banter between the two main characters was very juvenile for 27.-year-olds, It was hard not to cringe while reading. It feels like there was a lot of unnecessary information that I ended up skimming over because it was very dry and felt like a highschooler’s English assignment trying to reach a word count. It was also very predictable and easy to see what the next move was going to be.

On the positive side, I do like how the author wrote the spicy scenes. And the last half of the book is mostly the spicy scenes. This writing was a lot more grown-up and flowed a lot better, and most of the juvenile banter was gone.

How to help a hungry werewolf is a fun story for those who like supernatural stories. Seth and Cassandra are a sweet couple that you cannot help but cheer for.

This was just super funny and a good time. It wasn’t the best thing to ever exist, but man was it a really really good time, it reminded me a lot of when I was younger reading on Wattpad, but with much higher quality of material and it was just a lot of fun.

Enemies to lovers, childhood best friends turned mortal enemies after Seth starts to hang with the “cool crowd” and fat shames Cassie. So there is a bit of a bully romance here but it’s not extreme. Anyway, Cassie hasn’t seen her ex best friend since <i>the</i> incident in high school but now she’s back in town cleaning out her grandmother’s house, who recently passed, only to discover that Seth was close friends with her grandmother and she had no idea.

A cute, quirky small town paranormal romance perfect for fall. Plenty of spice. CS has a way of writing that is a bit exaggerated in this story and I’m not sure I was a fan. There is a general tone of nothing being too serious and the sentences are a bit choppy and quippy. I think a reader will find it fun and lighthearted or just obnoxious. I teetered between the two. I can't say I loved this but it was a cute read with some interesting storylines set up for future books.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

Gilmore Girls X What We Do In The Shadows

So clearly, this tag line grabbed my interest and didn’t let go. Not to mention… I will devour all and any cozy monster romance.

BLURB: When Cassandra Camberwell returns to her hometown of Hollow Brook to clear out her late
grandmother’s ramshackle old house, the last thing she expects is Seth Brubaker on her doorstep. Her
former best friend was responsible for the worst moment of her high school life, and she can’t
imagine he wants to do anything but torment her all over again.

Until she unearths the real reason this annoyingly gorgeous beast of a man keeps hanging around: he’s
an actual werewolf, who’s certain she’s the witch that will ease his suffering. But Cassie just isn’t sure
if she can trust him again. So Seth offers a pact: he’ll teach her all about her undiscovered magic, and
she will brew the potions he needs. No feelings, no funny business, just a witch and a werewolf
striking a deal.

🦝🦝🦝🦝🦝🦝🦝🦝🦝🦝

So when I originally finished this book, I was a little conflicted. I think it’s because my normal romance gravitation is toward books that lean heavily toward the romance. However, this book was a rom-com with an emphasis on COM. That being said, I finished this book, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

I want to note, there are definitely a few things that will trigger some, so WARNING: There is very little grovel or apology, and there is an instance of fat shaming… neither of these shitty things do we really get an explanation for until the end. In addition, the heavy emphasis on comedy, made this book feel more like a YA with some dirty talk… rather than a romance novel between two almost 30 year old adults.

Personally, I thought that this book was cute enough that I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, and there are very few instances where I won’t finish something.

Overall, I’m not mad I read this, it was something different, had potential, and the dirty talk was good.

Heat Level: 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Thanks to Netgalley & St. Martin's Press for the E-ARC! Loved this so much!! The banter was so good. Also loved the plus-size rep. Definitely will read more from this author.