Our December book for the Roadside Reads Bookcast, Wolfsbane and Mistletoe edited by Charlaine Harris was a wild ride. Not necessarily a great ride, but wild nonetheless. It seems my trouble with anthologies continues as there were more misses than hits in this book. Sure, there were a handful of authors that really hit the mark and made me laugh or feel something. Simon R Green had a great writing style that immediately made me run to goodreads to check out more of his work and add stuff to my TBR pile (here’s hoping I’ll get to his first Nightside book in 2017!) Carrie Vaughn‘s Kitty Norville short story seemed cute and I definitely added her series to my TBR. And Keri Arthur has so much stuff out, I don’t know where to begin!
All that said, the rest of the stories left me fairly unimpressed. The book starts off slow, peaks in the middle, and dribbled off at the end. It could have used better editing and perhaps looked at other authors that may have done a better job at creating holiday stories given the constraints. Some of the stories barely felt like werewolf stories, while others felt like it had nothing to do with Christmas.
To be honest, I think Wolfsbane and Mistletoe edited by Charlaine Harris would be better off being borrowed from the library or given as a white elephant gift than to be purchased by a serious werewolf story collector.
