The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #4) By: Laurell K. Hamilton (Book Review)

 (This review will contain spoilers) 

Summary:

Anita has fallen for the leader of a local pack of werewolves. She's survived a lot, but this love thing may kill her yet.

You guys know how much I have been loving this series so far and I have been hoping we keep going on this trajectory but alas we have hit a major speedbump. Not in the mystery/ crime fighting part of it but the whole romance aspect just shifted in this book to another level that I absolutely hate and do not understand. This book was action packed and yet again we're being exposed to a different aspect of Anita's world. All of that was top notch as per usual but Hamilton really fucked up with the development of Anita's and Richard's relationship and threw in the mix, Jean-Claude. There is so much to unpack. 

I had such high hopes for this series and then Hamilton threw in out of nowhere romance and now I'm barely holding on. When we finished the previous book Anita was newly dating Richard, a werewolf. And now in this book Richard proposes after only 2 months of dating! And towards the end their not even engaged anymore or better yet Anita is now undecided. First of all, if my man proposes in my kitchen without even a ring I'm not going to take him seriously. And Anita comes out saying she won't have sex with Richard before marriage. She already had sex in the past with an ex fiancé but now she wants to play perfect virgin? Where the hell did that even come from? That makes no sense with everything we have seen with Anita. She has killed a bunch of people, sacrifices animals on a daily for her job and she won't have premarital sex? Yeah, definitely does not make sense. Then throw in Jean-Claude and it makes even less sense. 

Jean-Claude is a character we have seen very little of and the parts we have seen were not very great to say the least. Every time he's in the picture Anita is caught up into some bullshit and almost dies. Since Richard and Anita are together Jean-Claude demanded that she dates him too so she can see who she really wants to be with. She admitted that she loves him. Where the fuck did that come from??? Not once did they have a tender moment together. He's so toxic and manipulative that I think Hamilton must be insane if she thinks us the readers will buy any of this shit. 

The actual story involving the disappearance of shifters was a heck of a lot more interesting than anything else. I'm happy that part was still on point. It was genius that there were more than a few people behind shifters disappearing. George Smitz, the man who we were introduced to at the beginning was asking Anita for help in finding Peggy his werewolf wife who has been missing. He ended up killing her but not the others. Elvira Drew was a writer who asked Anita to help her find a wererat so she can interview for her new book. Elvira and her witchy friends end up killing a few shifters to steal their skins that way they can shift as the animal skin they stole. That's pretty cool minus the murdering. But then we have the main bad guys who are a group of shifter hunting men who have been the main reason why so many shifters have gone missing. 

In this book we learned a lot more about werewolves and shifters. Richard is next in line to be Alpha but killing ain't his cup of tea which makes me wonder why he's with Anita to begin with. He's the most contradicting person ever. I think he's too afraid to give in to his wolf side and is trying to hold onto his humanity for as long as possible before he gets tipped over the edge. We got quite an insight on pack life and how the pack is being run on pain and violence. Throw in some snuff films including death and beastiality and we've got a fucked up bunch of people on our hands. That part was quite disturbing but I'm predicting we'll find out more in the next book.

Rating:

I'm giving The Lunatic Cafe 3.5 stars on 5. Y'all know the shift in Anita's personal life really bugged me since it didn't go along with everything we've seen from her thus far. Engaged after dating someone for 2 months? Doesn't have premarital sex? And she's dating Jean-Claude? Please help me make sense of this mess because I'm lost. I expected more and the only thing giving this book a decent rating is the mystery/crime fighting portion of it. Otherwise, that weird ass love triangle can be thrown in the trash.