★★★☆☆ – I’m not complaining!

This one’s a bit slow for my tastes – not dense enough with happening (whether that’s plot-wise character-wise, or thematically) for the pauce page count. Perhaps Kelly Hale does better in longer form? I’d imagine that could be the case – her prose is doubtlessly enjoyable. I look forward to seeing what her earlier Faction Paradox novel Erasing Sherlock is like (though I hear there’s a bit too much talk about Mr. Holmes’s “bulging member” or some such in that one).

This story is the one that suffers the most from the anthology’s seeming complete lack of proofreading, and it actually did impact my enjoyment when, say, punctuation was missing in an otherwise particularly emotional scene. The most tickling of all the proofing errors is, however, most definitely this:

[…] [']You have to be able to prove heritage these days and even then...'

*something here.

There's a huge scarcity of resources in most of the European countries because of all the refugees. […]

Somehow, it seems that a note from the author to remind herself of filling out a scene was left in – was this a draft that was accidentally published instead of the final version? Oopsie.