Review: 4 "meh" Christmas stories.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 10 20, 2013
Maybe it's the fact that these are short stories and the limitations of that format require some great writing to make for compelling reading.  Or maybe it's that I'm too old and have a difficult time finding romance reading to my taste.  Whatever the case, I found all four of these stories to be rather insipid, not having anything new to deliver to an HR reader.Anna Campbell's is the only one with some steam to it, but the story itself, apart from the bedroom scenes, is just a Cinderella story with the H's mother stepping up at the end as some kind of fairy godmother.  It felt silly and rushed.  (Yes, I know that "rushed" is to be expected in a short story, but still...)The other three are pretty generic love stories.  Perhaps Shana Galen's "The Seduction of a Duchess"  has something to be said for it in that the h is about 15 years older than the H.  That's interesting but the story is so-so.I had expected the Kate Noble story to be good because I admire her writing skills, but, again, it was a pretty run-of-the-mill "I was in love with you long ago when you just treated me like a sister, but look at me now" tale that had no surprises and little real chemistry.  And the writing, although good, wasn't as good as one finds in her full-length novels.However, this is free, so I guess one can't complain.  (Although when I downloaded it, they were charging 99 cents.)