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Hayden Crowe’s star is on the rise. “Daisy Addiction��, the band she fronts, is steadily working its way to the top of the music scene in Austin, Texas. There are rumors that music agents are showing up at their gigs—but then, there are also rumors of werewolves hanging out in her hometown of Blood Moon, Texas. Hayden has no time for such silliness. Unfortunately, the werewolves, at least, have plenty of time for her.

Hayden is “mugged�� one night after a gig, and soon begins to experience unsettling, carnivorous impulses she fears she cannot control. Instinctively, she knows there’s only one person she can take her troubles to: that O’Keeffe of the Coffee House, that Caravaggio of the Cappuccino, ex-boyfriend, bad-boy-barista, and tormented artist-soul, Ethan Caldwell. And boy, is that boy tasty!

There’s an aphorism that a writer should write what they know. This long-time Texan and some-time Austinite believes and appreciates that Kat Kinney knows Texas and that strange, paranormal version of Texas called Austin. But does she know werewolves? Of course she does—and passing that knowledge on to the reader requires an awful lot of explaining.

The language used in the story is satisfyingly blunt, and the writing by-and-large excellent. Maybe Kat Kinney pushes some of the metaphors too far, but maybe not—and that’s exactly how far ya gotta push ‘em. There are some great, imaginative, and wacky scenes: think a dark night, a Texas-style thunderstorm, a corn maze, and werewolves!

There was a lot of gratuitous gooeyness, both of the romantic and chocolate varieties. The youth-speak, text-speak, and textually-deciphered-emoji-speak got tiring after a while, which is not to say that’s not how the hip pup barks these days. There were a few scenes that left me confused, and the ending, though HEA (as promised in the blurb), seemed to resolve none of the intriguing, non-Haythan plot lines.

This reader, though bitten, did not get the werewolf fever. I thought the genre kept the considerable talents of Kat Kinney on too short a leash. The tropes seemed to serve as a cage rather than a bandstand. Perhaps in the next iteration, Kat Kinney will let the wolf out, rip the genre to shreds, and sew it all together again with the head where the tail should be. That’ll teach it who’s Alpha.