Enthralled - edited by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong

Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions ­– edited by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong

Pages: 443

Publisher: HarperCollins

Release Date; 1^st September 2011

A journey may take hundreds of miles, or it may cover the distance between duty and desire.

Sixteen of today’s hottest writers of paranormal tales weave stories on a common theme of journeying. Authors such as Kelley Armstrong, Rachel Caine and Melissa Marr return to the beloved worlds of their best-selling series, while others, like Claudia Gray create new landscapes and chaarcters. But whether they’re writing about vampires, faeries, angels or other magical beings, each author explores th strength and resilience of the human heart.

Enthralled is a fantastic anthology that is filled with stories by some of my favourite authors.

With the overarching themes of the paranormal and journeying, you’d expect a huge variation in the stories and there really, really is. Some are literal journeys, some have a metaphorical element to them and a few are just plain strange. In the best way, of course!

I have to admit that I read the stories of Enthralled out of order. I went to the contents page and picked the stories by their author and so the first I read was Melissa Marr’s Merely Mortal. I am a huge fan of the Wicked Lovely series and having read the final book, Darkest Mercy back in March, I was in need of some faerie goodness. I loved having a glimpse at the life of Kennan and Donia after the happy ever after (of sorts). They also weren’t the characters that I followed the most in the series so I enjoyed reading about them and them only.

My next stop was Automatic by Rachel Caine which centred around Michael and Eve from the awesome Morganville Vampires series. Having recently finished the latest book in the series and having to come to terms with the fact that I have months until the next one is published, Automatic was a lovely stop-gap. My only complaint about it would be the lack of Shane, but I do feel I may just being greedy...

I was just going to pick three of the stories to focus on, but as I loved so many of them, I’m going to briefly mention some others that really caught my attention. Jeri Smith-Ready’s Bridge was a beautiful and moving story told in verse and in the perspective of Logan, one of the main characters from her Shade, Shift and to-be-published Shine. It was brilliant to get inside his head and glimpse the inner workings of his brother, Mickey. Another story that got me for the sheer fact of its surprising nature was Claudia Gray’s Giovanni’s Farewell. I don’t know what I was expecting from it, but it definitely wasn’t that! It’s the type of story that I could very easily see working as a full-length novel. Finally, I’d like to give a shout to possibly the strangest story in the anthology, After the Late Night, Double Feature, Picture Show by Jessica Verday. I loved it! So much fun and very individual.

This is a fantastic anthology for catching up with the worlds of your favourite series’ as well as discovering some amazing authors that you may not have come across before. Brilliant!

A big thank you to HarperCollins for sending me a copy for review.

Sophie