Shadow of the Moon
Angelia
Fury Kattalakis
   New Orleans, Louisiana

     The Story of Son
Claire Stroughton
Michael
   Caldwell, New York
   Manhattan, New York

     Beyond the Night
Drew Carlowe
Freya Rozonczy
   Cornwall, England

     Midnight Kiss Goodbye
Sasha Armand
Trey McCree
   Atlanta, Georgia ( )

Well, it only took me a year and a half to get around to finishing this. I'm giving it an overall four stars, because I LOVED Kenyon's and Ward's contributions - they are both excellent. The other two were fine, I didn't get super into them but to be fair, I haven't gotten into the series they were from so that probably had a bit to do with it. ( )

After promising to stand by him forever, Angelia stabs him when she finds out he's not Arcadian. He ends up tracking her down after a shifter is attacked. Very complicated family dynamic, but funny moments too. Including seeing Vane, Bride, Zarek, Fane and other characters from Sanctuary
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Midnight Kiss Goodbye by Sherrilyn Kenyon - 4
Trey reconnects with Sasha after a nine year absence when he discovers she's in danger. She's trying to save her sister Rowan. Get to see several characters from the series.
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While I do read paranormal romance, I had never read any of these authors. I'm familiar with the names Sherrilyn Kenyon and J.R. Ward, so I expected those stories to be well-written, at the very least, even if not my style.

Yes, the stories were well-written and a couple appealed more to me than other. Or at least parts of them. The first story by Sherrilyn Kenyon seemed to be pretty typical werewolf material, but she had some nice twists in there. In this world there are two types of werewolves - those that start out human and turn wolfy, and others whose primary state is wolf, but turn human. Surprisingly these two sides hate each other and here is where the conflict lies.

It was obvious to me that this was part of a larger series, but I was able to catch on pretty quickly. Personally, I thought there was more than enough material in this romance to make an entire novel and I wondered why this hadn't been a full novel in the series it so obviously fits within. There are SO MANY characters in this story that it seemingly would have been easy to double the length of this to create a book instead of a novella. It was interesting enough to me that I would consider reading other books with these characters.
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The second story by J.R. Ward was unlike any I've read before. It involves kidnapping, seclusion, escape, and rescue, but not in the way you would think! The story has different paranormal rules than I'm used to, but the author is talented and I really enjoyed the story.
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The last two stories I found that I was really into them for the first 20-30 pages, but then the rules the authors created in their worlds veered from what I was expecting and it took me out of the story a little bit. The third story was still enjoyable, though. When the fourth story began, I thought it was going to be my favorite. It reminded me a little bit of the world of The Hollows (Kim Harrison) and a little bit of the New Orleans world inhabited by Jane Yellowrock (Faith Hunter), and the male and female protagonists seemed really interesting. The description of their abilities intrigued me and I was super interested in following their story. Then the fantasy world intruded. See, I like my paranormal romance more in the urban fantasy realm - I like the world to be as close as possible to the world we inhabit. This seemed like it would be that way, then everything changed. The conflict came from time-traveling gods and Hindu warriors??? There was this whole world populated with beings I hadn't heard of and didn't fully understand. This definitely lessened the enjoyment of the fourth story for me. But what really took me out of it were the editing mistakes. The rest of the book was flawless, but in this story there were several continuity errors. For example: they would make plans for "this evening" and say they were "leaving at 5:00" and two sentences later, ten minutes after they've left, "the park was quiet at midnight." I was scratching my head, wondering what happened to the 7 hours in between. And in one scene, the character was described wearing a leather skirt and lace top. The man loved seeing her in the leather skirt. Ten minutes later, he's removing her leather PANTS. These mistakes drive me up the wall because your brain has to play catchup, you wind up re-reading paragraphs, and it ruins the flow of the story. There were several such continuity errors in this one.

Overall a good collection that some will enjoy more than others, depending on how "fantasy" you like your paranormal romance. ( )