Bite Before Christmas — Holiday vampires with uneven bite

December 23rd. I'm in the back office of the library, ostensibly repairing the spine of a 1974 copy of The Exorcist, but actually hiding from a patron who wants to discuss the "spiritual implications" of Twilight. I need a palate cleanser. Something with fangs, but maybe—just for the holidays—a little less existential dread and a little more eggnog.

So I put on The Bite Before Christmas. Shirley (my cat, not the author) was asleep in my bag, and I figured if the narration was bad, her ears would twitch. They twitched a lot during the first half.

Here's the thing about anthologies: they're a gamble. You're betting a credit that both authors brought their A-game. In this case, it's a split ticket. We start with Lynsay Sands' entry, narrated by Paula Christensen. If you're an Argeneau fan, you know the drill—immortals finding mates, misunderstandings, eventual bliss. But listening to this felt like waiting for a kettle to boil. Christensen isn't bad—her diction is clear, she hits the technical marks—but the pacing? It drags. I found myself speeding it up to 1.5x just to get the characters to the point. It's light, it's fluffy, but it lacks the visceral punch I look for, even in romance. The audio equivalent of a sugar cookie: sweet, but it crumbles if you look at it too hard.

Then Tavia Gilbert shows up for Jeaniene Frost's Home for the Holidays, and suddenly we're actually cooking.

If you've listened to the Night Huntress series, you know Gilbert is Cat Crawfield. This Side of the Grave is where that performance really hit me—Gilbert carrying the full weight of Cat's exhaustion and fury without losing a single beat of the humor. She doesn't just read the lines; she inhabits the snark. There's a specific grit she drops into her voice when Cat is annoyed (which is often) that sells the character better than the text alone might. And she nails Bones' Cockney accent without making him sound like a caricature from a Geico commercial—a trap lesser narrators fall into constantly.

The contrast between the two halves is jarring. You go from a slow-burn (emphasis on slow) mystery-romance that feels a bit polite, straight into Frost's more action-oriented, banter-heavy dynamic. Gilbert understands the assignment: this is holiday chaos with vampires. She leans into the emotional beats without getting melodramatic—a tightrope walk in the paranormal romance genre.

Is it scary? No. My pulse didn't elevate once, except maybe out of frustration during the first hour. But as a holiday distraction while you're wrapping gifts in black paper? It works. Night Huntress fans will get exactly what they came for in the second half. Argeneau completists will tolerate the first. Once Burned is a decent Frost side-door if you want something more self-contained, though it carries its own baggage. If you're new to both series, this isn't your entry point—start with the main books or you'll be lost on the character dynamics.

Just be prepared to grit your teeth through the appetizer to get to the main course.

Shirley woke up for the second half. That's the only review that matters.