On the Prowl

TITLE: ON THE PROWL
AUTHOR: VARIOUS
GENRE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE ANTHOLOGY
RATING: 3 STARS

This book is a Paranormal Romance Anthology. For those of you not familiar with anthologies, it's a collection of short stories. Typically they are designed so that you'll get it for the stories by the authors that you already love, and then you read the stories by the authors you've never read before. Hopefully, you enjoy those other stories, and then the author might get some new readers! That might not be exactly what the purpose of anthologies is, but that's always been my opinion! I have never really been a fan of anthologies. If I enjoy the story, I never feel like it's long enough. I'd much rather read a full length novel than something so short. But this month, my online book club challenged us to read a few anthologies cover to cover. So, here's my review of the first one!

Alpha and Omega by Patricia Briggs - I have loved this short story since the first time I read it. On the Prowl is the only anthology I've ever bought because of this story! In this story, Briggs takes a character, Charles, who plays a minor part in her first Mercedes Thompson book, and gives him his own story. It's the prequel to a spin-off series called Alpha and Omega. Although it's a different series, I do think that you really need to read Moon Called first or else you just wont understand what in the world Charles is doing in Chicago. But this is a great beginning to another amazing series. Love it, love it, love it! And always something great to pick up for a quick re-read.

Inhuman by Eileen Wilks - This was a really good story. I was impressed that Wilks was able to do enough world building in a short story so that those of us that have never read anything by her weren't completely lost. From what I understand this is the middle of a series, but not the same characters as the other books. I'll probably be adding the first book of the series to my TBR pile. But I'd rather see more of these characters, and I'm pretty sure they don't really play a major part of the other books, but I could be wrong about that!

Buying Trouble by Karen Chance - I've been a Karen Chance fan for a while, so I enjoyed this story. It's not one that you have to read her others books to get the characters and the plot, which is really nice! Although it does add some back story to Midnight's Daughter. So that was fun. Overall I really enjoyed this, and think that even those that have never read Karen Chance would enjoy it.

Mona Lisa Betwining by Sunny - I just didn't get it! I was lost most of the time. There was zero world building for those of us that have never read anything by this author, and I'm pretty sure that this story was in the middle of a series of books. Because I could tell that there was a lot of back story that I didn't get at all! If you have read her books, this was probably a great story, but not recommended if you are just trying the author out to see if you want to read her books.

I had a really hard time decided what rating to give this book. If the story by Sunny hadn't been in it, I'd probably give it a 4. But that one story really brought it down. So, I had to go with a 3.