Hot Spell

Hot Spell Emma Holly Date: 2005-11-01   —   Book product page Rating:

Review of Hot Spell

I bought this book for one reason: one of the four novellas was Lora Leigh's The Breed Next Door, part of her Feline Breeds Romantica series (mostly at Ellora's Cave, but now at Berkley) that I started reading a year ago.  This seems to be my mantra lately when describing Romantica that I like, but this series is seriously kinky, and when I first tried to read the first in the whole Breed series (it encompasses wolves and coyotes tooo) - Tempting the Beast - I was still too much a Romantica virgin to deal with breeds and barbs.  Overall I think this is an interesting series, with a well-developed mythology.  I enjoyed this novella, albeit with reservations, and found it the only worthwhile one in this anthology, though Shiloh Walker's story came close.

Emma Holly's The Countess' Dancing Boy earned a C- from me.  It's part of her Alternate Reality Erotic Romance series and apparently, if you've not read previously in the series, this one doesn't stand alone.  I spent most of the book trying to figure out that the setting was more or less an Erotic Fantasy version of Victorian India, where "demons" masturbate on stage in front of enthusiastic society ladies.  This one just didn't do it for me.

In Leigh's The Breed Next Door, one of the Feline breeds (the Breeds were originally a genetically engineered species developed by baddies to be  super-soldiers; they were tortured and experimented upon, and though they are now free, those baddies who weren't caught and brought to justice want to continue their experiments) discovers that his mate lives next door.  Their "courtship", as it were, forms the basis of this short story, and those who are new to the series won't have a hard time at all understanding the history because the hero is enlightened about the "mating" aspect of the breeds at the same time the reader is.  My grade for this one was a B-.

Meljean Brook's Falling for Anthony earned honorable mention in this year's annual reader poll (not enough votes were received in this category to actually award a "win").  I adore the author's blog and, in particular, her sense of humor, but found her story the weakest of the four in this anthology. The mix of vampires and angels within the context of Erotic Romance was too much story for this novella, which had an oddly ethereal feel that didn't quite compute. I was confused, not only by the story, but in how it earned more votes than any other short story for 2005.  In my analysis for the poll's results, I suggested that her placement might have more to do with the popularity of her blog than her story, and as a result of reading it, I think perhaps I was right.

I'd read Shiloh Walker before: I hated Ghost of a Chance but liked Silk Scarves and Seduction. The Blood Kiss falls somewhere in-between, although closer to the positive than negative end of the scale; my grade for it was a C+. When a vampire takes a werewolf hostage, the werewolf's brother rescues him, taking the vampire's daughter hostage in the process. But he's got more than revenge on his mind.  There's a lot of action in this novella, and all is not as it seems to be.  I liked much of it, but in the end found it a little too busy for the page count. 

TTFN, Laurie Likes Books 

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