The Chopping Block by John Passarella

Since I quite enjoyed the first Grimm novel, despite some complaints, I decided to read the second book in the series - The Chopping Block. Set between "The Waking Dead" and "Goodnight Sweet Grimm", this book features a secret Wesen society.

It all starts when bones are found. Portland may be weird, but cooked bones are disturbing, even to Nick and Hank. As more cooked bones are found, Nick, Hank, and Monroe find themselves on the trail of a secret, cannibalistic Wesen society.

The subplot has Juliette trying to find out the cause of a dog's sickness. I don't like Juliette and it's got nothing to do with the main plot, but it was pretty cute. She didn't really intefere with the main plot too, which is a bonus.

I found that I enjoyed this more than the first book. This is mostly because Hank was much less annoying. In The Icy Touch, Hank was all about revealing the Wesen world to outsiders, which is obviously something that Should Not Be Done. Here, Hank didn't do anything like that; I suspect it's more to do with his injuries than anything else, but it was refreshing.

Like with The Icy Touch, I really enjoyed how Monroe is such a big part of the book. We get to see a bit more about Monroe's journey to becoming a Wieder Blutbad and how hard it is. It was a pretty good way to know more about the Wesen world, and it worked very well as part of the main plot.

If you liked The Icy Touch, or even if you didn't really like it but still like Grimm, you might want to check this out. I think this is a bit truer to the series than the first book and it was fun to read.