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A review by megwoman25
Stalkers: A Dark Romance Anthology by Abigail Davies, Ally Vance, Yolanda Olson
4.0
Stalkers & then some
This anthology took me 4 months to read simply because some of the stories were so fucked up that I needed breaks in between them. This was my first step into the world of dark romance and while I loved many of the stories, this book was a bit much at times. There are about 30 short stories, each that explore the stalking theme and are supposedly romances. I say “supposedly” because there are some stories in this collection that should be in a horror anthology as opposed to dark romance like the story “Blossoms In The Dark (A flower in the dark prequel)” by Ally Vance. That story was about a man who kills women named after Flowers like Rose for example, hands them over to his creepy friend who “plays with them” before putting them through the morgue kiln where he works and then gives the ashes back to said man to plant “roses” in his backyard using the ashes as fertilizer. There’s a bit more to it but even though it wasn’t what I consider romance, I still loved the creepiness of it all.
I bought this anthology specifically for Born Sinner and I loved that one but what surprised me the most was how much I took to the MM stories. Love is love and all that but I usually don’t read MM stories as it’s just never been my reading preference but now I am open to reading more of them because these stories were so ungodly hot and I loved every single one of them. There were only a few stories I didn’t care for but it was more of “it’s me not you thing”. The only negatives I found were there were many typos, misspelled words and terrible grammar throughout. The story that takes place in the 70’s referred to California as the Sunshine State and that’s not correct, it’s the Golden State. The Sunshine State is Florida although this mistake seems to happen often. That is just an example of something that should have been caught by an editor or beta readers! Some may not have noticed but I live in California so it made me stop and question it and that takes away from the reading experience.
Overall though I liked this and it introduced me to a lot of new authors and series that I never would have discovered otherwise. While I’d prefer not to have a stalker anytime soon, I did enjoy reading the creepy lengths someone will go to get their “beloved”.
This anthology took me 4 months to read simply because some of the stories were so fucked up that I needed breaks in between them. This was my first step into the world of dark romance and while I loved many of the stories, this book was a bit much at times. There are about 30 short stories, each that explore the stalking theme and are supposedly romances. I say “supposedly” because there are some stories in this collection that should be in a horror anthology as opposed to dark romance like the story “Blossoms In The Dark (A flower in the dark prequel)” by Ally Vance. That story was about a man who kills women named after Flowers like Rose for example, hands them over to his creepy friend who “plays with them” before putting them through the morgue kiln where he works and then gives the ashes back to said man to plant “roses” in his backyard using the ashes as fertilizer. There’s a bit more to it but even though it wasn’t what I consider romance, I still loved the creepiness of it all.
I bought this anthology specifically for Born Sinner and I loved that one but what surprised me the most was how much I took to the MM stories. Love is love and all that but I usually don’t read MM stories as it’s just never been my reading preference but now I am open to reading more of them because these stories were so ungodly hot and I loved every single one of them. There were only a few stories I didn’t care for but it was more of “it’s me not you thing”. The only negatives I found were there were many typos, misspelled words and terrible grammar throughout. The story that takes place in the 70’s referred to California as the Sunshine State and that’s not correct, it’s the Golden State. The Sunshine State is Florida although this mistake seems to happen often. That is just an example of something that should have been caught by an editor or beta readers! Some may not have noticed but I live in California so it made me stop and question it and that takes away from the reading experience.
Overall though I liked this and it introduced me to a lot of new authors and series that I never would have discovered otherwise. While I’d prefer not to have a stalker anytime soon, I did enjoy reading the creepy lengths someone will go to get their “beloved”.