Out of fourteen stories in this anthology, four were major fails in my book, but more than half of the stories were decent if not thoroughly enjoyable. Overall it's a decent anthology--it could have used some editing but it had something to appeal to many different audiences. My thoughts on the various stories are below:
Highland Wolf Pact-- Authors really shouldn't try to write stories set in medieval Scotland (or England) without proper knowledge. Note to author--the daughter of an English earl is NOT a viscountess (the son of an earl is not even necessarily a viscount). So many historical errors and badly written Scottish dialogue to boot. The one redeeming aspect was the origin it established for werewolves; I haven't seen that done anywhere else (and it was intriguing).
Dragon's Succubus-a germ of a decent plot but a major fail in executing it. It was disjointed, confusing and even worse Scottish dialogue than the previous story (nearly unreadable in places). It also needed serious editing: Note to author-- living beings come from good stock, plants come from good stalk unless you're talking about a pod person, which you weren't.
Just Bearly in Time- this was actually a cute little story with a little drama, a little humor and some good characters in a paranormal short story. As the title suggests it involved bear shifters and was nicely done.
Claiming their Royal Mate--This is part one of a series and I could swear I've read this exact story before so this may not be the first time in print for this one. Not a big deal to me, but it is a cliff hanger. It's a solid story. It didn't really pull me into to the extent that I've ever looked for the rest of it, but that's just because I didn't care for this authorverse (the rules/setting) for this series.
Shift Once for Love--I started a scathing review for this, feeling that it was just awful. I found it impossible to get into, much less follow the twists and turns and completely unbelievable plot points at times; but when I started to refer to it as the Romeo and Juliet does 'Twilight', I realized why I didn't like it--I'm an adult. This story is essentially a YA story with some badly-written, graphic sexual references in an effort to seem like a New Adult story. Seriously, the first page had the h thinking of her vagina as her 'inner cave'. I should have just stopped reading there but no, I actually read the whole thing and immediately regretted it. If you're 18-22 you might enjoy this; if you a huge fan of star-crossed lovers and Twilight you might enjoy this. If you're over 30, save yourself the aggravation and skip it. Without the graphic sexual references, this probably would be a decent YA story, but as it is it's just 5 cringes (my own negative stars rating system).
His Bear Hands--worth the price of the anthology itself. I thoroughly enjoyed everything about it. The h and H were interesting and 'real'. I loved Zoe, the h, in particular. Geeks are some of my favorite characters and while she was geeky, she wasn't a know-it-all as evidenced by the electrical issue at the beginning. Her hatred of mornings was a very humorous thread throughout and all of the secondary characters were interesting with plenty of potential for future stories. The writing was solid and it had a fairly decent plot for a short story.
Claimed by the Dragons--this story surprised me in a good way. Usually with paranormal menage there's some flimsy 'rule' or 'law' requiring two males to share a female. This story didn't do that. With all of the various plot points in stories like this: woman purchased as a bride for a dragon shifter alpha, develops feelings for the man who bought her for his alpha and finally the menage aspect, the story didn't follow a single stereotypical storyline. Everyone behaved like adults and yet there was still plot, drama and sex aplenty. The author's bio following the story mentioned her taking typical themes and tropes in stories and finding fresh perspectives. I'd say she succeeds wonderfully here. She certainly got me interested in reading the previous books in this series and subsequent stories (I'm pretty sure I've guessed who the secondary character Claudia ends up with in a subsequent book, but I'd like to read it)
Banished Scoundrel --I felt like there was a lot of backstory that I needed to know about the various players to better understand what was going on plot-wise but then I got to the part where shifting made the h horny and realized that the sex was the point of this and the plot, such as it was, existed only to provide some settings for them to have sex in and drama to add intensity to the sex.
The Alpha's Captive --No, just no. The single redeeming aspect to this juvenile trope was the h demanding to be treated with respect by two utterly unlikeable Hs (menage between h and two brothers).
A Dragon's Bite-a good story, the little boy was the best part of it for me. There is a BDSM plotline that is obviously an aspect of the other stories in the series--decently done, nothing really different from any BDSM story just set among dragon shifters which makes it a bit unique.
Vega Brothers: Julius --I'm not fond of the premise to the story, but I liked the four brothers. Julius and Ava made a really cute couple. The whole way that the two of them meet and their date was quite entertaining. Overall a very enjoyable story.
Bear Consumed --the prologue and epilogue were rather strange but the story itself was fine. I liked the fact that it wasn't love at first sight for them, rather a life-long friendship that became more.
Urban Encounters: Coyote --reading this reminded me of high school english class (I specifically thought of DH Lawrence's 'Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man'). I can't fault the writing skill that went into creating a story that had the feel of literature, in fact I'm impressed with the writing; that just doesn't make it any easier to get into or feel engaged with any of the characters.
Anna and the Bear -I didn't finish this one, it was too confusing to figure out what was going on. I didn't care for the writing style in general or the h and just gave up on it halfway through.