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A review by suzannalundale
Naughty or Nice? by Carly Phillips, Patricia Ryan, Kathryn Smith, Sherrilyn Kenyon
3.0
The good and/or bad thing, or maybe just the thing, depending on the story in question, about these collections of long short stories/short novellas is that, with limited pages, the author either has to get to that secure happy ending in fewer pages, or employ the X Months Later tool. (The other option being to forego the secure happy ending by leaving things at a satisfying one-nighter, or a promising beginning to something the reader won't ever see, but that seems pretty rare.)
In this collection, we find some instalove, a long-time megacrush fulfilled, and one instalove followed by X Months Later. It may have been my mood, but I let myself enjoy the instalove, for the most part, though I admit there were aspects of the first story I found off-putting. (Frankly, I would almost advocate skipping the first, unless you're a completionist.) I enjoyed the second and third stories quite a bit. The Regency, being the fourth and final was...fine. The characters were pretty good, and the connection between them believable. I felt the anachronisms less than I might have because the story was short. I'm not a total control freak about historical accuracy (If I were, I think I couldn't bear more than 2% of historical romances and mysteries!), but had this been a full-length piece, I suspect I'd have stronger Views on that front.
In this collection, we find some instalove, a long-time megacrush fulfilled, and one instalove followed by X Months Later. It may have been my mood, but I let myself enjoy the instalove, for the most part, though I admit there were aspects of the first story I found off-putting. (Frankly, I would almost advocate skipping the first, unless you're a completionist.) I enjoyed the second and third stories quite a bit. The Regency, being the fourth and final was...fine. The characters were pretty good, and the connection between them believable. I felt the anachronisms less than I might have because the story was short. I'm not a total control freak about historical accuracy (If I were, I think I couldn't bear more than 2% of historical romances and mysteries!), but had this been a full-length piece, I suspect I'd have stronger Views on that front.