Reviewed by Kimberley

TITLE: Working Stiffs (A M/M Vampire Romance Charity Anthology)

AUTHOR(S): Tanya Chris, Lyra Evans, HL Day, K.Evan Coles, Roberta Bablanski, et al.. 

PUBLISHER: Self Published

RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2020

LENGTH: 487 pages 

BLURB:

Not all vampires are idly rich. Some of them have day jobs. Er, night jobs.

In a world struggling to come to grips with the existence of vampires, where reactions range from excitement to fear to determined disbelief, these vampires are just trying to make ends meet. Some of them do mundane work—like waiting tables or driving a cab. Others have more prestigious careers in medicine and crime prevention. But what all their jobs have in common is people. Unpredictable, interesting, frustrating, hostile, helpless, tasty people.

Whether they’re pouring drinks, answering phones, hacking into a computer system, or serving up the perfect food/wine pairing, these working stiffs are too busy to fall in love. Or are they?

This International Workers Day, celebrate by sinking your teeth into thirteen awesome stories about vampires at work. Because even the undead have to earn a living. Proceeds benefit the WHO’s Covid-19 Response Fund.

REVIEW:

Let me start this review off by saying that I will NOT offer reviews for each individual story because doing so will make this review far too long and honestly, with this anthology consisting of 13 stories with almost 500 pages of wonderfully written novellas featuring ordinary working class beautiful vampires, it would be virtually impossible to offer opinions on each one without retelling the stories. And really? All of them are really well written. The characters, dialogues and storylines are engaging. These stories were always out there ready to be told. I’m surprised that stories featuring working class vampires aren’t explored/written more.  Stories of super rich vampires, while lovely, are done all the time. Super rich and immortal aren’t necessarily everyone’s favorite fantasy and it’s good to see that these authors came together to mix it up a little.

These are thirteen of the sweetest novellas I’ve read in quite some time. What tickles me the most is that these vampires got their jobs via the same employment agency called—VAMP(Vampire Agency for Mortal Professions). And for the life of me, I cannot explain why that made me giggle every single time I read it. These stories have a vampire who’s a housekeeper/personal assistant—he basically manages an author, you have a vamp who’s a phone sex worker, a truck driver, a crime scene analyst, a cop…the whole gamut of essential workers. And in a way, this is what these stories are—an acknowledgement and salute to the essential workers who are basically keeping this country running during this pandemic. Which segues nicely into my next point: the proceeds from this books goes towards the Covid-19 Response Fund.

The characters are so very engaging. They’re funny, smart, sexy and witty. What I particularly liked about these novellas is that these vamps are from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and the authors did a a pretty good job of telling their stories without being insulting. Long Haul even has an HIV positive MC that was heartbreaking, sweet and strange all at once. How to Keep and Author(Alive) was sweet and funny. While all of these stories were well written, those two were by far my favorite of the thirteen.

I will point out that these novellas don’t have HEA HFN(Happy for Now) endings so if you like your stories to have nice and tidy endings, you will be just a tad disappointed. All of these stories are solid with well fleshed our characters so the quality is not in any way less because the endings aren’t completely HEA. They all end on a pretty high note so while they have the HFN endings, many of them appear to be the beginning of the journey for these wonderful men.

Each of these stories told all had a common human element to them. It was great to read about these vampires experiencing the emotional and financial ups and downs, ins and outs, the mundane, the exciting and hilariously human aspects of life. And that is what makes these stories glorious. 

RATING:

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