Mills and Boon Christmas Treasury of Romance

Disappointing Christmas collection

2 Stars

This is the first Mills and Boon Christmas Treasury although I’m sure it follows on from the Christmas Annuals they published in 2007 and 2008. It takes authors from all different Mills and Boon lines and gives you eleven stories promising romance for over the Christmas season.

Authors featured are: Lucy Munroe, Heidi Rice, Liz Fielding, Alison Kent, Julia James, Margaret Moore, Pamela Toth, Debra Webb, Karen Martyn, Natasha Oakley and Susan Mallery.

My biggest complaint about this book is that only three Christmas or festive stories out of the entire eleven. Why bother compiling a Christmas Treasury only to have most stories have not one drop of Christmas content? I just don’t get it. If I buy a Christmas anthology, I’m looking for 100% Christmas stories.

Having said that the lack of Christmas themes was the biggest issue with this book, I probably would have still been satisfied with the book if I had enjoyed the stories. But, the majority of the stories were bad, with some terrible ones thrown into the mix. Formulaic, highly depressing, lacking depth and emotion, boring and dull were just some of the words that sprang to mind about a lot of the stories. At least one of the stories was also previously offered for free on the e-harlequin website which was rather annoying.

Having said that – there were three good and very enjoyable stories, too. The Christmas Crush by Pamela Toth, Evidence of Desire by Debra Webb and Fool for Love by Susan Mallery were by far the best stories of the book. They alone stopped me from giving this collection only 1 star.

The stories ranged from 6 pages long up to 52 pages long. I tended to prefer the longer ones as they had more depth but that wasn’t always the case. For those who like a particular series of Mills and Boon, there were 2 Modern stories, 3 Romance stories and 1 each of Blaze, Historical, Intrigue, Special Edition. There was also the Woman’s Weekly Competition winning story and a single title author.

I have to say that I did love the retro cover. It really stood out and made me laugh at the same time.

Overall, this book was a huge disappointment to me and I’m afraid that I can’t recommend it. If you’re a Mills and Boon fan then you’re probably going to be much more satisfied buying a full length book. 2 stars.