Best New Paranormal Romance edited by Paula Guran I picked this up by accident (I missed the word romance) but I really enjoyed. These are beautifully written stories with a good range of styles and plots. ( )

It's a good anthology, with 10/12 stories engaging me, and even the ones that didn't were good in their own right. My absolute favorite piece was McDonald's; Bear's story was enchanting; Hand's story was just beautiful. The anthology had a good diversity, considering its theme was paranormal romance. Not all stories had happy endings, and not all stories had a traditional romance. Definitely worth checking out if you write any kind of speculative fiction with romantic elements, and romance readers, I think you ought to check this out solely for the intro, which I found fascinating.

I do have one nitpick about the anthology: typos. I kept wanting to check my copy to make sure it wasn't an ARC, there were so many typos: missing quotation marks, missing punctuation: stuff like that can really trip the reader up, and there were plenty of times I wondered who was speaking, or if I was reading dialogue or exposition. And I don't want to blame either the authors of these stories or the publishing house, cause I'm sure the mistakes were a mix of both, but there were plenty of them, and spread out through the entire anthology.

No matter: I'll be happy to buy the next volume when it comes out.

For a full review, which contains a story-by-story reaction which may or may not include spoilers, please click here: http://calico-reaction.livejournal.co... ( )

http://www.readforpleasure.com/2007/0...

While some of these stories are excellent, none of them resembles what I've previously read as "paranormal romance". Some are romantic; very few are paranormal. I'd call the collection a cross-section of supernatural and straight-up sci fi/fantasy, generally involving significant romantic relationships. I'll review the stories first, then talk about the collection as a whole and Guran's definition of paranormal romance.... ( )