Leah Wilson

An earlier version of this book was published by Borders (or at least for Borders) exclusively sold within their stores. However for this new edition a new story was added by Rachel Vincent.

"Haunted Love" Cynthia Leitch Smith
There's more at stake (get it? at stake? vampires? work with me people) in this story then a love triangle. There's a decades old murder and hiding your true self and learning to move on from bad experiences. I admit I did not see the twist coming at all and I enjoyed the 'romance' of this story. Just gotta believe right?

"Amber Smoke" Kristin Cast
I enjoyed this story, and the premise behind it (let's go Furies!), but it felt rushed and as if it didn't have enough space to really explore everything. Alek's motivations were vague and defined only in that he wanted to protect Jenna. Jenna accepted her role fairly quickly. The pacing was off and I think if this was made into a full length novel it would smooth out the pacing faults easily.

"Dead Man Stalking" Rachel Caine
This ties in with her Morganville Vampires series. In The Eternal Kiss we saw the Morganville Universe through Eve's eyes and this time we see it through Shane's eyes. This isn't a story of romantic-love, but of family-love. Or whatever passes for family-love in Frank Collins' (Shane's father) eyes. This wasn't a story you could really read independent of the series either, as it relied upon knowing about Frank's last visit to Morganville and the fall out from that for development purposes. I enjoyed this look through Shane's eyes, saw a side of him we don't normally see. As with Eve's story, this could certainly be a set up for another arc in the series proper, but it makes you wonder--how many chances is this man going to get to burn the town?

"Table Manners" Tanith Lee
I wanted to like this story, because it looks at vampirism so differently, but the writing style was rather odd. It was almost like a gothic novel, with some of the sentences awkwardly phrased and elaborate descriptions of scene and mood. I liked that Lee looked at vampirism as an evolution of humankind, not a disease or curse and made it clear that really vampires didn't need blood or to avoid the sun or any of that, the media had just convinced them that's how things should be. Popular Culture--it will be the death of free thought and rational thinking.

"Blue Moon" Richelle Mead
I've not yet read the Vampire Academy series (it sits so forlornly on my shelves...beckoning I swear), but after reading this I have a new sort of impetus to. Blue Moon has nothing to do with the VA series (that I know of), but Mead's writing has a sort of urgency to it that I responded well to. I liked that her two characters, Lucy and Nathan, were both not quite sure what to do. Vampire-Human relations are, at best, categorized as Master-Servant class. It was enthralling simply put.

"Changed" Nancy Holder
Holder's story was brutal, emotionally and in how it depicted vampires. These aren't your brooding romantic vampires--these are amoral, cruel and inhuman creatures parading around in human guise. I felt so bad for Jilly, for everything she went through all because of a doomed (romantic) love. Her development throughout the story was fairly astounding, given the short nature of the story, but it flowed so easily. So logically as Jilly went from being desperate to find her friend Eli because she loved him so much, to finding him and understand that he loved her but not enough and ultimately to her realization that it didn't matter what form of love they shared, it was love and that's what mattered.

"Binge" Rachel Vincent
This is set in her Soul Screamers universe. A story about a siren and a leanan sidhe, of what power they have and what destruction they can cause. This was a painful story as Mallory, who always made sure Andi didn't go too far with her siren songs, learned that sometimes its hard to know when to stop even when you know better. You could feel how painful it all was for Mallory and how badly Andi wanted to save her from herself. In the end they both learn a powerful lesson, but at what cost.

"Free" Claudia Gray
This is set in her Evernight universe (featuring Patrice, Bianca's roommate from the novels). We learned the bare facts of how Patrice became a vampire in Evernight, and here we learn the whole truth. Over a century later we see what this one choice, how powerfully Patrice wanted to be truly free, becomes. Beauty is her weapon, her way to survive and charm. I enjoyed learning this little about her and what makes her tick.

These stories were at times surprising and at others times heart-breaking. I enjoyed this anthology a lot, and can only hope for more such anthologies in the future.… (meer)

Though I read it while I was watching the Gilmore Girls I enjoyed it (though I should have staved off my reading so that I could prolong my GG experience having finished the series today).

It's a definite must read for any GG fan, even though I argued aloud with some of the articles (I would tell you which ones by name, but I packed that book away already). As with any anthology of opinion pieces that is all to likely to occur. One that definitely is *still* bugging me is a piece on how well the businesses of Stars Hollow would actually survive in the real world. The video store would do fine esp. if they have rare or older works which larger chain stores do not (having lived in small towns I can tell you that small independent video stores can and do survive even when larger chain alternatives exist).

Anyway, it was a quick, light read and though I did not find it as in depth or have as many social or political commentary pieces as many of the other Smart Pop books I have read contain I do think that it was well worth the $12 I spent on it.… (meer)