The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #4)

by Laurell K. Hamilton

And you don't fall in love with a werewolf. It interferes with your work. Especially when you're a preternatural expert, like me. My business brings me up close and personal with all shapes and sizes of monsters. And not ALL of them want to kill me. Take, for instance, the local pack of lycanthropes - they're werewolves to you. A number of them are missing, and they've come to me for help. Maybe because I'm dating the leader of the pack. I've survived a lot - from jealous vampires to killer zombies - but this love thing may kill me yet. Look out for information on this book and others on the Orbit website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk.

• ISBN10: 0425201376
• ISBN13: 9780425201374
• Publish Date: 1 March 2005 (first published 1 January 1996)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 19 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Berkley Publishing Group
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 344
• Language: English

Reviews

[FranJessca @ A Book Lovin' Mama's Blog]

I first read The Lunatic Cafe by Laurell K. Hamilton in 2009 when I was still in the US Navy. The Anita Blake series is what helped break me back into the Urban Fantasy genre. I was so happy to be back in the earlier books of Anita Blake because these focused on her mostly. Although readers will get to have some love triangle moments in this book between Anita, Jean-Claude, and Richard, be prepared before diving into this book if you do not like love triangles. It gets worst in later books, but The Lunatic Cafe has some heated issues between the Vampire and Werewolf dating Anita.

This book though, dives into some issues with the werewolf pack and how some shifters are getting killed. Anita is brought into investigating with Dolph and his crew, but she also has the pack leader, Marcus wanting her help too. There’s a slight issue between Anita and Richard in this book after discovering that Richard is having trouble with Marcus. He doesn’t want to tell her about it since she’s not a part of the pack. Jean-Claude has some difficulty in this book with a female vampire named Gretchen. Gretchen has it out for Anita for Jean-Claude loving her. Poor Anita hates dealing with romantic drama, and you can tell immediately she wants to live her life without it all. Unfortunately, it’s hard when you have two supernatural beings in love with her. 

I don’t want to go into any further detail for readers that haven’t read this book or series. I loved the action in this book because Anita is having to investigate who or what is killing werewolves/shifters. She’ll find out not everything is what it seems to be, especially with whom she has to work on investigating the murders. I love the constant drama between Richard and Jean-Claude. Yup…I’m one that loves love triangle dramas. I’m a big Jean-Claude fan and never liked Richard. He drives me crazy with his jealousy and also having passive-aggressive behavior. He’s a werewolf and doesn’t like having to harm someone. Geez! 

Jason is introduced in this book, too, and I forgot how he was at the beginning of the series. He comes off as very clingy in the beginning and scary since he’s new to the pack, although I love how he handles himself in certain situations. 

Overall, this book gets five stars from me, and I recommend it to readers of the Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance genres. I’m doing a re-read of this series, and it feels like it’s brand new to me since it’s been a while that I read the books. I love every bit of the re-read. 

[Berls]

3.5 stars

I really liked the development and closer look at shifters in this book. It was fascinating and there was some great action and police tension.

But I was thrown by the pace of Anita and Richard's relationship. Last book they were considering dating and now they're in love? Too fast for me - and I just didn't feel it.

[Chelsea]

Not suite as good as the others but still interesting to read. I kind of hated how Anita kept pushing Richard to do things he clearly didn't want to do. And then when he did it she regretted it immediately. There's no winning with her.

[Nany]

God, I hate Richard with all my heart. He's the only thing I don't like about the series, but I get that he's a necessity.

[inlibrisveritas]

I liked this book a lot more then the past three, Anita wasn't as unbearable in this one. I did like the fact that Anita is finally going to give Jean-Claude a chance...I mean come on! Why the hell did it take her this long? Anyway, it's a pretty good book and if you liked the first three you'll enjoy this one more probably.

[Melanie]

I've read/listened to this series many times and I still enjoy it. Every time I come back to the early books, I'm reminded that Richard was always a pain in the ass.

This book has witches, lycanthropes, vampires and stupid humans in it. It also has Edward who will always add fun to a party. The books with Edward in them are always way more interesting and only get better throughout the series as we learn more about him.

The series character list grows a lot in this book. We meet Raina, Gabriel, Marcus and most importantly, Jason. We get to see more into the werewolf and other shifter communities. We also see Richard's beast show its head as well.

[ibeforem]

I really like this series.