A review by styxx
The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales by Kate Mosse

2.0

'The Mistletoe Bride' is an anthology of short stories by Kate Mosse, perhaps best known for her trilogy of stories set around Carcassone - Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel. For an author who is perhaps most familiar with epic sweeps of story, the short story format is a different challenge. One that I feel Mosse met with varying degrees of success. I didn't hate any of the stories, and some I enjoyed very much, but others left me with a feeling of dissatisfaction. Some felt rushed. One or two distanced the reader because of the style Mosse had chosen to employ in telling the story; this makes it harder to care what happens to the characters. However, all of them make use of themes that appear in Mosse's longer works, most particularly the use of folklore as inspiration.