I know, because I work in a bookstore, that there were people who were extremely excited to get their hands on a copy of this book. But, was the book really something to get excited about? I decided to find out.

From the title alone, I already knew that this was book was likely to fall into the Romance genre, which is my least favorite category of books. I read the back cover, and found out that this book is made up of four short stories, by four different authors, which made it a bit more interesting. There were a lot of pages here, and I figured that since it was split into four different stories, maybe I could manage to read it. After all, if I didn’t like one story, there were three more to try! Two things made me decide I would read this book. One, it sounded like there would be at least one vampire in it, and hinted at demons and werewolves as well. That’s usually a good thing. Two, I got it for free, because I work at a bookstore. Can’t go wrong there!

By the time I was done, I got about what I expected. I asked someone I work with who also has read this book what she thought of it. She summed it up quite nicely. “Eh.”

The first story is by Kim Harrison, and is called “Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil”. I had high hopes for this one, thinking it would be something like the book by a similar name. I ended up liking this story the best out of the four. Ivy is a vampire, but a “living” vampire. She works in a CSI type place, that is run by vampires who aren’t alive anymore. Her boss is attractive, but is hitting on her, and so, she’s not interested. She knows he only wants her for her blood. The Vampire boss isn’t allowed to just take it though, without her permission, so he tries to change her mind. There are some pretty well written scenes of the two of them trying to tease the other one into giving in first. The best part of the story is the “universe” it is set in. It had witches, banshees, werewolves, and a whole hierarchy of vampires. I would like to have read more about all of that.

The second story was by Lynsay Sands, and is called “The Claire Switch Project”. Claire works in a lab with two guys she has known since high school. One has asked her out, but she declined. The other one is the twin brother of her best friend, and she is damned near in love with him. The three are working on zapping animals with some kind of laser, to make them be able to change their appearance like chameleons. Its pretty obvious where this is going. Some of it might have been a little funny, if it wasn’t so telegraphed before hand. No surprises here. I almost quit reading this story when Claire and her best friend are talking about a glamorous, sexy, popular, actor, who is in all the movies, who Sands named “Brad Cruise”! C’mon!

Kelley Armstrong wrote the third story, called “Chaotic”. Hope is a half demon who is working by day for a tabloid, and by night as a spy of sorts for some secret group. She goes on a blind date with this guy her mom set her up with to a museum for a benefit. Within seconds, its clear that two things are going on here. One, the blind date guy is boring. Two, there is someone trying to steal jewels from the museum, which Claire finds out about because she’s a half-demon who can sense chaos. The story takes some interesting twists and turns. There are a few sex scenes in the story, which seemed kind of thrown into the story, and not really essential. I would have liked to know more about the half-demons and all their weird powers instead.

The last story in the book was called “Dead Man Dating” and was written by Lori Handeland. Kit is a frumpy, chubby, studious type, who goes on a date with some guy she met on the internet. He turns out to be dead, but does show up for the date. Things go from there. Kit is rescued by a demon hunter who sounds a lot like Antonio Banderas. This story was had too much “romance novel” and not enough “action/sci-fi” for my taste. This story is practically made to order for women who are fourty-something, living at home with mom, and not dating anyone. A lot of emphasis was put on how the main character is a virgin, and things go much as you would expect. The parts about the demons were very interesting though. I might have liked the ending more if this was a longer book. As it was, it seemed kind of early for what happened to happen.