Urban fantasy is so much fun to read! The mingling of the
real world and an "other" world creates such fantastic
world-building and characters, with seemingly infinite variety. Here are a few
urban fantasies you might enjoy:
Rachel Morgan is a runner with the Inderland Runner Services,
apprehending law--breakers throughout Cincinnati. She's also a witch, one of
the many Inderlanders (witches, warlocks, vampires, werewolves) who revealed
themselves after genetically engineered tomatoes wiped out 50% of humanity (hold the ketchup, please!). On
the run with a contract on her head, Rachel reluctantly teams up with Ivy,
Inderland's best runner and a living vampire. But this witch is way out of her
league, and to clear her name, Rachel must evade shape-changing assassins,
outwit a powerful businessman/crime lord, and survive a vicious underground
fight--to--the—death!
Joanne Walker has three days to learn to use her
shamanic powers and save the world from the unleashed Wild Hunt.No worries. No
pressure. Never mind the lack of sleep, the perplexing new talent for healing
herself from fatal wounds, or the cryptic, talking coyote who appears in her
dreams.And if all that's not bad enough, in the three years Joanne's been a
cop, she's never seen a dead body—but she's just come across her second in
three days.It's been a crazy week. And it isn't over yet.
When MacKayla Lane's sister is murdered, leaving a
single clue to her death, Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The
quest to find her sister's killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing
is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask.
She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to
learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed-a gift that allows
her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae.
A year ago Jane nearly lost her life taking down an
entire blood family of deadly rogue vampires that preyed on the helpless local
populace of an Appalachian town. Now, after months of recuperation, she’s back
and ready to fight again. Except this time, she’s hired by those she’s trained
to kill—vampires…Jane Yellowrock is the last of her kind—a skinwalker of
Cherokee descent who can turn into any creature she desires and hunts vampires
for a living. Back from hiatus, she’s hired by Katherine Fontaneau, one of the
oldest vampires in New Orleans and the madam of Katies’s Ladies, to hunt a
powerful rogue vampire who’s killing other vamps.
As a librarian, a lot of my reading ends up being somewhat serious. To be good at my job I read a lot of award winners and things I can booktalk at the schools for teen audiences. But there are some things I read simple for the sheer joy of reading and being entertained...my popcorn reads. Some people might call these guilty pleasures, but as a librarian I feel you should never feel apologize for what you like to read. 
It was a romance novel titled, Trouble in Texas, by Katie Lane. The books in this series tend to be over the top and include unrealistic hijinks that are quite fun to read. However, one scene in this book yanked me out of the story so hard that I almost had skid marks on my bum. 
Can't Buy Me Love - Molly O'Keefe
