"What We Do in the Shadows with the small town feels of Gilmore Girls in this swoon-worthy romance that will leave readers delightfully cozy and hungry for more.

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.

Totally doable. Until they get hit with a do-or-die mating bond. And now the heat is rising, in between fights with formers bullies and encounters with talking raccoons. They just have to not give in. Unless giving in just might be the very thing they never knew they always wanted."

I was sold when I found out this is basically Gilmore Girls with werewolves.

Was this book good? Not specifically.
Did I have a fun time reading it? Mostly.
Did both of the main characters also kind of make me want to drink bleach? Also yes.

If you're in the mood for a silly goofy read, this is probably the book for you! I rather unfortunately wasn't for the first 50% of the book. I probably just should have come back to it at a different time, but I kept reading.

I will say I enjoyed the last 50% a lot more because I was in the right mood. It was definitely leaning into the ridiculous very much at that point!

While this book had a very promising premise, it failed to deliver in the execution. This read more like a first draft than a final draft, fraught with pacing and character development issues. Some fun dialogue is all that saves this from being a complete flop.

I think that this idea had potential but it just didn’t work. The characters are supposedly in their twenties but the entire book reads VERY much YA. And that does make the “spice” even more awkward. The dialogue is so awkward. The writing is like a stream of consciousness that doesn’t translate. So many sentences starting with “Because” and “And”. im sure this book for someone, I’m just not sure who.

Let's normalize putting triggers in the description on NetGalley. Not a book I'm actually interested in.

How To Help a Hungry Werewolf is the first in The Sanctuary for Supernatural Creatures Book and is such a cozy swoon worthy romance that has me wanting the second book in the series now. The book drew me in by this amazing cover and the best part of the cover for me was the cute racoon. This was my first time reading anything by this author and I am so glad that I discovered them. The book was well written and I enjoyed all of the characters in this, especially Cassie. I highly enjoyed this book and would recommend this one to any romance reader especially if you like your romance with some spice. Thank you to NetGalley and St Martins Griffin for this ARC read in exchange of my honest review of How to Help a Hungry Werewolf by Charlotte Stein.

Cassandra comes home to pack up her late grandmother’s house and finds more than she expected when her ex-best friend comes calling on her grandmother. Is he sleeping with her grandmother? Ick! Next she finds him breaking into the house, then she finds him in the basement in the middle of the night taking a shape she can’t quite believe. Next thing you know, she’s having to help the bully who hurt her.

Charlotte Stein writes a very funny best-friends-to-enemies-to-lovers paranormal romance. I think it’s the foundation between Cassie and Seth as childhood friends that really makes this work. They have all of these good memories between them. They didn’t have crushes on each other. There was no secret love. They were just quite simply best friends. Until they weren’t.

Seth grows into a really great guy. He owns up to his mistakes and is still the sweet kid she used to know. He still has the same ticks. He acts the same way in response to events. Then there is Cassie who has changed due to his bullying and the rest of the people he hung out with in high school. This makes her a great character to give Seth his “come to J” moment.

Their chemistry is off the charts. Stein writes some amazing foreplay scenes that just involve talking. (chuckle) Holy sugar, Cassie can talk a good game. Stein doesn’t even have to have them couple up because what they do on their own is combustible. (chuckle) This is not to say that the author slouches when it comes to the inevitable. Thank goodness.

I really liked How to Help a Hungry Werewolf. It’s fun and who doesn’t need a little fun with their romance.

Thanks to NetGalley for the chance to read an arc of this.

I'm super disappointed to have to rate this book 2 stars. I liked When Grumpy Met Sunshine so much that when I saw I could request this, I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, I knew very early on while reading that I wouldn't enjoy this nearly as much as I wanted to. I don't know what happened between WGMS and this. While I thought the writing in WGMS was very good, the writing in this felt juvenile. The character of Cassie was likable, but her inner monologue was immature to me. It left me annoyed a lot. Seth was likable, too, but even he seemed immature. The way the two of them talked was weird to me. It felt disjointed, it didn't feel natural. I did enjoy the personalities of the inanimate objects, and I can't forget about Pod.

I will say to the people who haven't read this yet because of the bully storyline, maybe give it a chance anyway. Things aren't as they seem.

Not going to lie—the days are cooling down, the clouds are rolling in, the beverages are getting warmer, and I am here for it. We are entering into Fall and I thought what better way to celebrate than an appropriately cosy Fall themed romance? How to Help a Hungry Werewolf is one part Practical Magic, one part Gilmore Girls, and a whole funk load of The Southern Vampire Mysteries series. However, while fun and cute, it is not without its faults.
When I think of this novel the dynamic between Cassie and Seth is what stands out the most. Their back and forth bickering and rambling conversations had me laughing out loud. I truly felt like they spoke as if they had grown up together and developed their own abstract cadence, that they then immediately fell back into when they met up again as adults. As someone who has maintained a 20+ year long friendship with my best friend, this is something that one-hundred percent happens, and it was so amusing to see that actually play out in a piece of fiction.
That being said, the need to push that dialogue did end up biting the narrative in the butt. While I liked Cassie as she was relating to Seth, I don’t think I liked her as a character on her own. The fact she held a grudge for so long and couldn’t let go even in adulthood, when the initial slight was so immature and childish, just annoyed the heck out of me. It seemed to me that it was only there to act as a catalyst for further bickering, thereby creating more opportunities for that back and forth dialogue. While the aftermath was fun, the cause was confusing and annoying, and made Cassie just seem really petty and whiney.
Overall, I’d still probably recommend this. It was a fun read even if I didn’t one-hundred percent gel with the protagonist.

The magic in this was absolutely pitch-perfect, and the way Stein built to the reveal of why Seth had been mean to Cassie in high school--not to mention how he'd ended up as a werewolf in the first place--was genius. I'm so exited that this is going to be a series.

I'd classify this book as two soft dummies that are falling fast (fated mates vibes) and fighting it as hard as they conceivably can. The romance is besties to bullies and back again...and ooooh the journey back again is a hoot! Cass is understandably in denial about her burgeoning feelings about the best friend that betrayed her and Seth, bless his himbo heart, is doing his best to win back her trust and be a gentleman. They both quickly learn that you can't fight nature (even with all the witchy potions and tricks) but it's fun watching them try. There is some world building and the author puts her own spin on commonly held paranormal tropes. This is a PNR-lite romance with the heart and humor that Charlotte Stein is known for.

This book was OK to me. I think the story has a lot of potential, but I didn't it as much as I thought I would. The writing felt a little juvenile, and I just don't think it was MY cup of tea. There were a lot of things that were repetitive and some of back-and-forth between the characters was off-putting. The idea of the story is great, I just think it could have been executed a bit differently.

This was an interesting read for me. Looking at the cover I expected a cute paranormal rom com and what I got was a book that took a left turn straight to horny town full of chaotic energy. I did enjoy the best friends turned enemies turn friends and more vibes of the story brought around via forced proximity as well as the unknown witch aspect. I also enjoyed the banter that we did get between the 2 main characters. However with the rapid and chaotic pacing of the story, I missed the tension and build up to the relationship. I do appreciate how Stein handled the fatphobia the FMC was dealing with and how the MMC helped her learn to love herself. I combo read this via ebook and audiobook. I definitely enjoyed the audiobook more and found myself gravitating towards that. I found that the narration by Yael Rizowy fit the overall vibe of the story well. Overall, I was engaged and plan to read the next book in the series.

Quick-paced, cozy, little paranormal romance with friends-to-enemies-to-friends-to-lovers.

It's a slow burn but the spicy scenes are several pages long and I wish that there had been more of them. As with most slow burns, it takes forever for the characters to get together and the build up is sooo angsty.

I wish that what Seth wrote that Cassie reads (towards the end of the book) was spelled out. The raccoon gets to read it - why don't we get to read it?

The end of the book felt like there should have been more - but this is going to be the first in a series. I am guessing that more will be in the next books?

I want to try and be as kind and constructive as possible in this review, but I really did not like this book. The cover is obviously really great and I was anticipating a cozy fall read based on the description, but that’s not what was delivered. Almost the entire book with just Seth and Cassie at her house talking, so we never saw much of the small town, there were barely any side characters, and the coziness never came through either.

Firstly, I wish the conflict for why they stopped being friends would have been something different. It’s all based on a fatphobic comment Seth made when they were in high school that very publicly humiliated her. It had such a severe impact on her she decides to do homeschooling for the rest of high school and at the start of the book, she still harbors a lot of resentment towards him. It happened while he was hanging out with her high school bullies, and the reasons he has later for why it happened and why he started hanging out with them didn’t really make up for it. Also, he seemingly made amends while they started getting to know each other again, but their whole relationship relied too heavily on their friendship as kids. They didn’t really get to know each other for who they were as adults, which also made their dialogue feel very immature. It was meant to be witty and funny but for me it just felt like I was reading about two teenagers who obviously had feelings for each other but refused to admit it. The way they danced around a topic so much and wouldn’t just come out and say what they were thinking drove me crazy by the end.

Another huge gripe was the way the whole tone of the story felt disjointed. In the beginning, they’re still trying to figure each other out and they were very much just friends. It became sexual what felt like very quickly and while I don’t mind smut (and the smut in here wasn’t all that bad), it just felt very out of place. I wish there would have been a slower build up of attraction or something that made it feel less jarring. If it would have been sexy from the beginning, or more innocent like it was in the beginning I think it would have flowed nicer. Seth was also quite charming, but he stumbled over his words so often and danced around things, yet all of a sudden he's a very dirty talker and confident in bed despite being a virgin? Again, things just felt inconsistent, like it needed another round of edits.

Something I did really like though was Cassie’s magic and how it was explained. It was a very innate type of magic where she just had to listen to her gut and she knew exactly what to do. I also liked how kind and caring she was and that she wanted to help other creatures the way she helped Seth.

Overall, I think this story has good bones, just maybe some more editing to make everything feel more cohesive.

This story is seen through the view of a quirky young woman who has returned to her high school town to live in a home left to her by her grandmother. She soon encounters her ex-best friend, finds out they are both members of the super natural community and learns to accept her gifts while hefting out some much anticipated revenge to old bullies. The author does a fantastic job at building relationships early on and making the characters relatable from the start. This quipy fantasy is like Gilmore Girls meets Onward and I absolutely ate it up. All of the descriptions of fantastical concepts were written in a very real world way, helping paint a picture of a normal life with a little added sparkle (and spice!). It’s humorous, magical, sexy and entertaining.Absolutely will continue the series!

DNF at 60%.

I enjoyed Stein's first book and was excited to see her take on a paranormal romantic comedy. However, I cannot continue. The dialogue is bothering me. It is very cringy. I read this via the ebook and tried the audio to see if it would help. It didn't. I will continue to read her books.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc!

I want to start off by saying that I’m not a huge paranormal reader, especially when it comes to werewolves. However, I do like reading these books for spooky season, so I was excited to pick this one up!

Cassie returns to her hometown after the passing of her grandmother, who left Cassie her house and pretty much all her belongings. Cassie begins work going through the hodgepodge of belongings in the house when she hears a pretty frantic knocking. When she goes to see who it could possibly be, she’s shocked to find Seth, her old childhood best friend turned enemy. Despite the fact that Cassie is very displeased to see Seth, he’s acting very strange. Seth doesn’t even know about the passing of Cassie’s grandmother, and once he finds out, he seems very insistent on needing to know how it happened..definitely suspicious behavior. Cassie isn’t sure what to make of Seth’s behavior, besides speculating that maybe he was somehow dating her grandmother. Then, when Cassie hears something in the basement in the middle of the night, she goes downstairs to find Seth urgently searching for something. He tells her he’s looking for his medicine, and then the impossible happens- Cassie finds herself racing up the staircase, running for her life, as Seth turns into a werewolf.

Seth’s condition is hard for Cassie to believe, but she can’t unsee how he transformed in her grandmother’s basement. It turns out, Cassie’s grandmother was a lower level witch who would make a potion for Seth to help with his werewolf issue, and he was searching for the potion or the ingredients of the potion in the basement. When Cassie mentions a recipe book she had used to make soup the night before, the two discover that the soup is actually what Cassie’s grandmother would make for Seth to help him. Cassie agrees to help Seth out with the potion, because despite the fact that she can’t stand him over an incident in high school, she doesn’t want to see him suffer.

As the two spend more time together, Seth reveals to Cassie that he believes she may also be a witch, one more powerful than her grandmother. He also introduces her to the world of other supernatural beings. As Cassie gets to know Seth more as an adult, as well as discover herself more as a witch, things change between the two of them. Especially when she finds out that as being a werewolf, he gets incredibly turned on very easily, a curse that rubs off on Cassie as well. The two have work to do, but find themselves unable to concentrate because their attraction to each other is so overwhelmingly strong. Now the two have to figure out how they’re supposed to break the horny curse-while also battling against the reappearance of some high school bullies.

I did enjoy the humor in this book and I thought that Cassie was a funny and likable character. However, I could have done without the whole horny curse plot, and I felt it to be cringey a lot. There were some really charming characters though, like Pod or Nancy. It was nice to see Cassie grow into herself as a witch while also getting her friendship back with Seth.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a not so serious paranormal book.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

With Halloween around the corner, I was excited to read this paranormal romance. I’m not going to lie the prologue was hard to get through. While the author does have a content warning at the start of the book, it was hard to see how the MMC would redeem himself. His actions had a severe impact on the heroine so much so that she had to be homeschooled for the rest of her senior year and even years later she’s unable to forge close relationships for fear of getting rejected and hurt. I was curious to see how, if even possible, Ms. Stein was going to redeem him.

The MMC came across as very himbo at the start of the book in a way that grated. I can see how Ms. Stein was trying to perhaps give him puppy dog vibes to go inline with the werewolf theme, but he comes across as immature and without any depth. That being said, he does sort of grow on you as the story goes on. He is charming and seems to care about the FMC, but it’s just so overshadowed by the prologue.

Sometimes I really enjoyed the banter in the book and other times it just felt immature. They felt more like teenagers than adults. In fact the first half of the novel did feel very YA, which gave the book a disjointed feeling when the second half became more like erotica. I’m all for spice, the spicier the better, but it didn’t seem true to the characters we’re presented with at the start of the story. So it was a bit jarring.

The chemistry between them felt more platonic throughout the first half until suddenly it turned sexual. I wish their attraction to one another evolved more organically. It feels like they’re friends one minute and intimate the next. Much like in the novel when Seth and Cassie cross the veil into fairy land, readers cross a veil in which one half of the book is the friend zone and the other half is sexy times. There’s no journey in between for us to get there. The sex scenes were awkward and not very sexy. A lot of unnecessary commentary was made about bodily fluids… we’ll just leave it at that.

I really wanted to root for them, and if the prologue hadn’t happened I would’ve rooted for the MMC more. I understand that they were just kids when the incident happened, but when they meet again it seems that Seth is more interested in his potion than reconciliation and atonement for what he did. He does, however, admit later on that he hasn’t earned her forgiveness. But I think Cassie forgave him too easily without much effort on his part. It leaves you with a sense of well, where do we go from here? There’s no journey towards redemption. They pick up where they left off rather than getting to know each other as adults. Cassie is such a lovely and caring person, and to be honest he didn’t really deserve her despite their chemistry.

I really liked how Cassie’s magic was innate and all she really needed was to trust her intuition. It sends a powerful message about believing in yourself and trusting your gut.

“Feelings, a tingle inside, a strong sense of self—all will better inform you which is the correct path to take,”

“You have to trust yourself, your true, clumsy, silly self, her brain whispered. And though her heart thumped too hard to hear it, she suspected it was right. All she had to do was listen, all she had to do was believe. She could be more, she knew she could.”

I also enjoyed the world building and the rules that Ms. Stein came up with for the various paranormal beings. It was a fun and different take from what we’ve seen before.

Overall, it was an okay read. Would I re-read it, probably not, but there were some moments I did enjoy. I can see how this book will appeal to many.