Name: The Witch and the Werewolf
ISBN: 9780373139989

Michele Hauf

Michele Hauf lives in Minneapolis and has been writing since the 1990s. A variety of genres keep her happily busy at the keyboard, including historical romance, paranormal romance, action/adventure and fantasy. Find her on Facebook at: Michele-Hauf-Author, and on Twitter @MicheleHauf, and also on Pinterest at: pinterest.com/toastfaery Visit her website: michelehauf.com Email Michele at: toastfaery@gmail.com

The Witch and the Werewolf

Christina M Masters

I was provided an advanced copy by Netgalley for an honest review...

I really wanted this book to be a 4 or 5 star book for me, because first off it is a romance and I love romance and they tend to be at least 4 star reviews for me usually and second, it features a witch character and I personally don't feel as if there are enough stories around with compelling witch characters or story lines that involve witches. Mireio starts off as such a great character. She is an independent woman, who happens to be part owner of a brewery, and a strong witch who is preparing to do a spell to grant her immortality, which just so happens to mean she needs to devour the blood from a vampire's heart. She meets Lars, the main male character, by chance, when he is running through her yard in the middle of the night as a werewolf and later he tracks her down to her brewery because he can't get her scent out of his mind and that is where our story takes off. 

Sadly this book was only so-so in my opinion. I loved Mirieo as a character, but Lars fell a bit flat for me. He is the one who tracks down Mirieo, but then he goes all alpha on her in certain circumstances, which I can't really go into since I don't want to give too many spoilers, but just didn't make sense at certain times. Overall, I felt that there were too many things going on in the plot. Mireio is preparing for an immortality spell, which basically means she needs to find a vampire and rip out its heart out so she can drink the blood from it, but she also has alternative motives for this. Lars is dealing with other issues, which, again, I don't want to go into too much detail, so that I don't give major plot points away. And there is a baby involved! Okay, so confession time, one of my least favorite tropes in a romance book is when a baby is included in the story. I don't have anything against kids! I swear. And honestly, I have seen them done decently well in some of the romance that I have read. But, as a rule, I don't want them in my romance novel and in this book the kid plays a decently large role and he was not mentioned in the description, which means maybe they meant for this to be a big reveal (SPOILERS, SWEETIE!), but I would rather know this trope is included in the book going in, otherwise I sort of feel duped. And to be honest, if I knew the child was in the story I probably would have avoided it all together. 

What I did like about the book was it was fast-paced, I liked the main female character, and wasn't overall bad, I just didn't love it. And, as I mentioned before, witches. Witches are my catnip. Although I wish the author would have included more witchcraft in the story. Also, it includes other characters from other books in the series, albeit briefly, but they were intriguing enough that I am actually interested in reading about them. The author adds a few pop culture references here and there, which I tend to always enjoy in books I read and the romance is cute for the most part, although a bit insta-love and occasionally a bit too sappy for my liking. I guess when you have a somewhat shorter book you can’t really drag the falling in love part out too long.