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Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire
4.0

I adore Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, but I was really reluctant to pick this one up -- the cover was really off-putting and I wasn't in the mood for another Buffy clone. I'm SO glad I kept going.

Our Heroine, Verity, is a waitress in a strip club, a champion ballroom dancer, and a member of the cryptozoologist Price family, who has been secretly supporting the local population of cryptids for centuries. It's a lot for the character (and the reader) to take in, but where the story really shines is in Verity's relationships with the locals: yes, they might be a Dragon Princess, a Chupacabra, a Tanuki, etc., but they're people. People is people.

When she is approached by Dominic, a member of the rival Covenant of St. George (who hunt, rather than help, cryptids) she has to decide whether to work with him to investigate rumors of a Dragon living beneath Manhattan.

I was utterly charmed, in spite of myself, and I'll certainly be tracking down the rest of the series.