My Awesome Review of Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

wolfsband-and-mistletoesmallI’ve written about the holiday-themed werewolf anthology Wolfsbane and Mistletoe in the past, but it wasn’t until now that I finally got my hands on it. Wooo Christmas and werewolves! This anthology features an assortment of Christmas-y werewolf tales by quite a few  bestselling authors. Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Keri Arthur, Rob Thurman, and Karen Chance, just to name a few. I was pretty geeked to get this book since I am a HUGE fan of Karen Chance and Rob Thurman. Plus, I hadn’t ever read anything by Charlaine Harris before, so I was curious. Oh, and it’s almost Christmas, so of course I had to get some holiday reading in. Check out the review!

The book opened with Gift Wrap by Charlaine Harris… and, it was quite possibly one of the worse stories in the book. Sookie finds an injured and unknown werewolf on her property and within a few pages she ends up hooking up with him. My first thought was…

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And then I was like “this is a super boring and totally unoriginal story.” To the next one! And the next one was…. The Haire of the Beast by Donna Andrews. It was a super short, but entertaining story. Not the best ever by any means, but better than a bland one night stand story. Like all anthologies you have a mixture of good, bad, bleh and meh. This one was a “meh, it’s ok”, story. Luckily, as you get deeper into the book there is much more awesome awaiting you. I won’t bore you by going into each of the 15 stories, so I’ll cut to the good stuff.

There were quite a few good stories in this book, such as The Star of David by Patricia Briggs which was a nice action-packed family werewolf story. I also enjoyed Simon R. Green’s Lucy, At Christmastime. It was a sad story, but a good one.

Eventually I got to the stories by Karen Chance and Rob Thurman and my reaction was something like this…

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I adore Karen Chance, and I am obsessed with Rob Thurman’s Cal Leadros series (which has werewolves in it), so of course I was filled with Christmas joy while reading their stories. And damn, did Thurman deliver. I am not being a biased fangirl when I say Thurman’s story Milk and Cookies was one of the best stories in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, because it really was. Not only was it filled with Christmas meaning, but it was a deliciously dark werewolf story. A wonderfully wicked tale with a moral to it. Like a real Christmas story, but with blood and death. Karen Chance’s story, Rogue Elements, was also great. I loved the mystery of it.

Overall, this was a great werewolf anthology. Yeah, there are a few duds in there, like any anthology, but there are some amazing stories to make up for the bad ones. My only issue was that just a few of the stories were Christmas themed, others were simply set during Christmas or Christmas Eve.

Either way, still an entertaining read.

– Moonlight

About the Author
Moonlight (aka Amanda) loves to write about, read about and learn about everything pertaining to werewolves and other supernatural beasties. She writes for top genre sites like Vampires.com and Werewolves.com. You will most likely find her huddled over a book of folklore with coffee in hand. You can stalk her via her Twitter.

 

 

By moonlight

One of the writers for werewolves.com, as well as vampires.com.

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