A review by emfass
Dark Fairy Tales by Karina Halle, Natasha Knight, Marley Valentine, Aleatha Romig, Willow Winters, Skye Warren, Cora Reilly, Celia Aaron, T.M. Frazier, Sierra Simone, CJ Roberts

adventurous dark emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I liked a few of the stories in this collection, and will be adding those authors to my to-be-read list. I understand the conceit of all the stories being interconnected, but after a while reading about the exact same setting and knowing that each story was going to have a very similar set-up got very old for me very quickly. 

Similar issue for me as other short romance stories I've read: not enough time to build emotional connection for the payoff to be enjoyable. I know the purpose of these is more one-shot snack-sized treats, and serve as prologues/epilogues to the authors' other work, or to introduce readers to authors they might not know yet. I also didn't fully put together that these would be dark romance, not just sexy retellings of fairy tales, and found that I reeeeeally didn't enjoy certain aspects of the dark romance part. So maybe that subgenre just isn't for me.

Stories I liked:
-American Witch by Sierra Simone (this story was tied to the New Camelot trilogy plus it's Sierra Simone so of course I liked it)
-Beauty and the Beast by Willow Winters
-The Swan Maiden - Natashia Knight


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