The Particulars: Contemporary romance anthology, 2016, Self-published, Out of print, two stories (linked below in review) available separately in digital
Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Disclaimer that I know Sarah M. Anderson and Laura K. Curtis. Anderson and I presented a workshop together at an RWA conference a million years ago and Curtis and I have hung out together at various events. I suspect Anderson might have sent me a copy of this book once upon a time.
The Review: I had a completely different book picked out for this month's Challenge but when I went looking for it, I couldn't find it. What I did find was this holiday anthology that I had totally forgotten I owned, it fit the theme perfectly, with characters all over the age of 40, and I'm nothing if not an opportunist.
The Christmas Pony by Sarah M. Anderson gets things off to a good start thanks to a very funny meet-cute of an opening. Alice is a divorced teacher with a grown daughter who acts like she's decrepit even thought she's only 50 ("Mom I worry about you all alone..."). She likes her life in her Midwest town and she's friendly with her neighbors. Maybe too friendly since one of them shows up and leaves a pony (yes, a pony) on her doorstep. One of his daughters is her student and while his wife and daughters are citizens, she thinks he may be undocumented. Which she suspects is why he's leaving a pony on her doorstep about one step ahead of the local law.
Kirk Douglas (yes, really - it's joke fodder in the story) lands on Alice's doorstep after getting an anonymous call that someone is keeping a farm animal within city limits. The fact that it's Alice, this attractive, single, straight-arrow school teacher doesn't fit. There's obviously more to the story, and he's more than happy to investigate, as well as ask Alice on a date to an ugly sweater party.
This was a charming story with a fun rom-com style vibe and a very light mystery about the pony (Where did it come from? How did Alice's neighbor come to have it?). Although not gonna lie - the undocumented neighbor plot element really hits differently in 2024 given current events. Frankly the happy ending feels positively quaint.
Grade = B
Midnight Clear by Ros Clarke is essentially an inspirational (no sex, but the characters aren't dead below the waist) given the importance faith plays in the story. Allison is a single mom to two teenage boys, having left her unfaithful ex-husband back in South Africa, she's now in rainy, cold England for her first Christmas post-divorce when her dreary mood is interrupted by an rambunctious Irish setter at the local park.
The dog's owner is local vicar Peter. The two soon strike up a friendship and Allison is feeling tingly for the first time since her husband ran over her ego and self-worth. The fly in the ointment? Allison's faith is badly shaken....did I mention her philandering husband was also a vicar? Who cheated on Allison with members of his own congregation? Yeah, great guy that one.
The presence of this story, with it's strong inspirational themes, is an interesting inclusion in this anthology. The short word count isn't enough to convince me that Allison is really moving on from the betrayal of her ex, but it's a quiet story that packs a punch. It petered out a bit at the end, but still - very interesting.
Grade = B
Sparks by Laura K. Curtis finds Kate Bellows returned home to her small upstate New York town to pull a local moving company back from the brink. The business is losing money and it's her job to right the ship. She starts by interviewing staff, including Adam Miller, the IT guy on staff and local volunteer firefighter. He's also very attractive, but given that she's now his boss - well that's a complication. It gets even more complicated when her house catches on fire and Adam offers her a temporary place to stay.
I fell right into the first two stories but this one took a couple of chapters for me to find my sea legs. However once Kate's house catches on fire I was settled in. This is a closed door romance and its strength lies in the details. I have a passing familiarity with upstate New York and Curtis does a fantastic job with the setting. I knew this town and could immediately picture it in my mind. I also loved the inclusion of a volunteer fire department. A good, solid romance with some added workplace complications to juice up the conflict.
Grade = B
The Longest Night by Yasmine Galenorn features the Winter Solstice and a practicing pagan heroine. Merilee Johansson has just gotten out of a bad marriage - her husband changed, she didn't. Things turned emotionally abusive until one day Merilee decided it was time to walk away. She's relocated to a small artist community in Washington hoping to pick up her paints again - just as soon as she finds her muse. What she didn't expect to find was Chris Hunter, the handsome tech geek who comes to her new home to install her Internet.
Not much happens in this story as it's mainly internal conflict. Merilee and Chris like each other, go on dates, the end. Galenorn doesn't try to do too much with a short word count and it's well executed. Mileage will vary on this one. I zipped through it at a fast clip but it felt a little hippy-dippy new age-y for my tastes and anytime "fate" is mentioned in a romance novel my eyes tend to roll back in my head.
Grade = C
A Taste of Blessings by Suleikha Snyder features a lower angst forbidden romance against the backdrop of the Bengali Hindu celebration of Durga Puja. A book editor based out of Chicago, Tiya Chatterjee is coming home to Ohio for Durga Puja. A breath away from 40, single, and with no prospects on the horizon, Tiya is bracing herself for well-intentioned matchmaking, nosy aunties and her mother's disapproval over just about everything in life. She's also bracing herself to see Arnav Biswas, divorced father of two, sexy as sin, and her unrequited crush. He's single, she's single, sparks start flying right away, so what's the problem? He's divorced, she's never been married, and well that just won't fly with most of the folks in their community, including her parents. Given the importance of community and family to both of them, this isn't something to take lightly, even if they want to tear each others' clothes off.
Another story that took me a moment to settle in, mainly because there are a number of secondary characters. But once I figured out who was who it was off to the races. The fun is in the flirtation between Tiya and Arnav and the sly humor that Snyder infuses into the story. The forbidden romance trope is not a favorite of mine, but in a novella where the angst is tempered by humor and banter? It really worked for me.
Grade = B
This was a really strong anthology and a nice way to pass the time. I've been in a slump, put off my TBR Challenge read to the last minute, but had no trouble getting through all of these stories in two sittings. It's a shame that the anthology is no longer for sale and that three of the stories are currently unavailable. Here's hoping the authors can make them available again down the road.
6 comments:
On the first story: the prevalence of cop and cop-adjacent heroes in romance has increasingly become a problem for me; it's hard to suspend disbelief when we see what we see every day. It sometimes help when the stories were published long ago, so I can remind myself it's likely the author was as unaware of the reality that ACAB as much as I was back then, but still, it's hard.
Otherwise, this really is the unicorn of anthologies, isn't it? Four Bs and one C? Solid as hell!
(I'm late with my entry, but by golly, it will happen this week, you hear me? THIS WEEK)
I'm glad you found a strong anthology! They are so hit or miss that to find one with mostly winners is truly something. I don't think I could read holiday stories in May, myself, but then again I can barely read them during the holiday season, LOL.
I went with a favorite author, Marguerite Kaye, this month. I knew she had done an older protagonist romance so it was a cinch of a pick in this especially tough challenge! I picked A Forbidden Liaison with Miss Grant from 2020, which features a displaced Highlander who is screaming against the wind about the Clearances, and a self-made wealthy shipbuilder who lost his wife eight years ago and fought hard to keep his children with him instead of shipping them off to his wife's aristocratic family when she died. As lovely as the prose is, and as wonderful as the background events are (this is set against King George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822), the romance just fell completely flat. The characters acted like 20-somethings in instalust who basically keep telling each other it will never work without actually attempting to make it work. The hero's family is introduced late in the story and their reactions to his new lady love are completely glossed over, after he spent 90% of the book fretting about it. The cover is gorgeous, the history is on point, but this was a dud for me, unfortuntately. It won't stop me from reading the rest of Ms Kaye's work, because she is 85% hit 15% miss for me, but I would not reccomend starting here.
Wow! Those are some impressive grades for a multi-author anthology. I love the theme of older couples tying the stories together. I didn't have luck finding older couples in my TBR, so I went with a "seasoned" couple - both dealing with loss.
AL: Yeah, he's the very definition of "cop-adjacent" since he's an animal control officer (which I just realized I didn't really spell out well in my review....), which is different but also he would be a threat to someone who is undocumented. I liked this story but man, it hits WAY different in 2025.
Eurohackie: I had to look it up because my memory is a sieve, but this is a Kaye I haven't read yet. When she's "on" her books are great, but yeah - the misses for me usually are because the romance falls flat. I've never faulted her on her world-building and history, which are typically well-done and why when she releases a new book, it ends up in my TBR.
Jen: Yes, it was shocking to find an anthology where all the stories, even the Galenorn which wasn't my cup of tea, were strong enough to make a pleasant reading experience. In a pre-digital / ebook world, I liked anthologies for trying new-to-me authors, but inevitably you might find one really strong story then get staddled with a couple of duds.
Post a Comment