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I picked this book up ages ago because I was interested in reading the Dark-Hunterverse by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Except apparently not that interested, because it took me literally years to actually read this book. It's comprised of 4 romance novellas, each featuring a tapestry in some way. Two of these are historical romances, and the other two feature paranormal romances with a historical aspect that involves time travel. They were all enjoyable in their own way, but none were terribly remarkable.

"To Kiss in the Shadows" by Lynn Kurland is the first novella included. This is one of the purely historical ones. It features Lianna, a noblewoman who lost her family recently, and is herself badly scarred. She's at court because she's the sole inheritor of her family's large estate, but she's being badly mistreated due to her scarring. Her life changes when she meets a pair of infamous brothers who are capable of seeing past her scars and to the person she is inside.

This was probably my favorite of the novellas. I liked the writing style a lot. I instantly connected with Lianna, and I got a lot of giggles out of the brothers. The romance has the most development emotionally of the enclosed selections, and definitely felt the most genuine to me. I was a bit disappointed that this is a clean romance, but that's really my only complaint with it. I'd definitely like to read more Lynn Kurland in the future. 4 stars.

"An Interrupted Tapestry" by Madeline Hunter tells the story of Giselle and Andreas. They were good friends when they were younger, but as they grew older, Andreas stopped visiting for reasons that Giselle doesn't really understand. However, in a moment of desperation, she goes to him for help saving her brother, and there the story begins.

I enjoyed this one while I was reading it, but I honestly couldn't remember what happened during it when I went to write this, so it fails my test of memorability. Giselle was one of my less favorite heroines, though I didn't actively dislike her, I found her incredibly naive and hard to believe in. She did learn, but I just couldn't comprehend how she was so clueless. The romance was probably the second most developed, and I did like the dynamic between her and Andreas, but for the most part, I found this fairly unremarkable. 3 stars.

"Dragonswan" by Sherrilyn Kenyon is the first Were-Hunter work, and it lays out the framework of the more human-dominated Arcadians and the more animal-dominated Katagaria. I thought I would really enjoy this, as I'm a big fan of shifters, but this set-up felt really generic. Channon is a historian studying a tapestry, Sebastian is the Arcadian who's come to steal it, but finds himself unexpected mated to Channon, and has to fight with himself over how he deals with that revelation.

Again, this one was fairly unremarkable. There's a big explanation of the whole mythology that I found somewhat boring, although I might be interested in a more thorough exploration of it, from a less simplistic viewpoint. Channon was a fine main character, but probably the least memorable, as the thing about her that I remember most strongly is that her name is "Shannon with a C." I thought that the inner conflicts Sebastian experienced were entirely too easily resolved, and the story honestly lacked tension for me. I think that may be because it was just too much material to truly cover in a novella. It was certainly enjoyable while reading, but I forgot it even more quickly than the Madeline Hunter entry, despite the supernatural elements that I should have found more enjoyable and tropes that I'm usually a fan of. 3 stars.

"Into the Dreaming" by Karen Marie Moning is the final entry in this anthology, and probably the one I feel most conflicted by. I've really enjoyed Moning's Fever series in the past, and I own a large number of the Highlander books, which this is the final entry in, so I was interested to see how this went. It's the story of Jane, an aspiring writer who's been dreaming of a sexy Highlander for all of her life. One day, she receives a tapestry in the mail and wakes up in the 1400s, where she meets said Highlander, only he doesn't remember her. She has one month to break through his icy shell and save him from a fate worse than death.

As seems to be a bit of a trend for my readings of Moning, I liked Jane a lot, but did not like Aedan, her love interest, at all. Moning tends toward these supremely alpha males that come over to me as nothing more than jerks, to be honest. Jane also very much romanticizes medieval times, which I find hard to swallow. Knowing many of the real dangers of that time period (especially in terms of childbirth!), I have a hard time reading about a main character who wants to bear half a dozen children during that time without cringing. Also, I had just recently read the first Highlander book, which has a main character with very similar preoccupations, so seeing it here felt very one-note. Not to mention that it's referenced several times in the story that Jane started dreaming of adult Aedan as a child, which is very gross as far as I'm concerned. There's an explicit discussion that the dream sex did not happen until she was 18, but that doesn't really make it better. I'm extremely uncomfortable with men who view children with sex objects, even if they don't act on it, and fated love stories do not make that any better. Sorry, not sorry.

On the other hand, I felt like within its bounds, the romance was well-done. Jane really puts effort into courting and tempting Aedan by turns, and it made for a very sexy romance for me. Unfortunately, that didn't entirely pay off for me, as the final consummation of their romance was mostly off-screen, and completely abandons the framework that all their previous encounters had built up. There is also some emphasis on helping Aedan heal that I enjoyed. However, at the end of the day, I remained uncomfortable with a lot of the tropes involved in this, which definitely impacted my enjoyment. I am still undecided on reading the rest of the series, to be honest, but I think I will give it one more book and see what happens. Perhaps I've simply outgrown Moning's style of romance. Anyway, this was a 2.5 stars.