The original one-shot, Perfect Situations was simply great (5/5) and enjoyed Vignettes too (4.5/5), but I think, it was taken to the point-of-no-return, where it should be finished, or at least wrapped up in some way.

 

Perfect Situations was good. The perfect story to give the figurative finger to all the crap JKR spewed out in HBP. 5/5

But Vignettes? 3/5 Would have done better to only bring a couple of people into mix. Instead, we have Harry and Daphne making one big happy family. The Snape scenes were good though, one of the few pluses for the sequel IMO.

 

I re-read this recently and liked it very much. The story is a romance and it works greatly as such. I liked the writing, it flowed smoothly and I did not find it jarring at all when there were scenes from different authors.

I liked Daphne's characterisation, despite the fact that it is quite cliche. The usual cold Ice Queen routine. Yet, it was still written well enough that I enjoyed it.

There were a few points that I did not care for much. The first being the incompetent Dumbledore. I do not care how Dumbledore is written, whether he is good, bad or evil, as long as the author does not make him incompetent.

Secondly, the duel that Daphne describes between Harry and Voldemort was completely under-whelming. Not that the author should have dragged it out, but at least it could have been written better than that.

Also, the fact that both Harry and Daphne are super rich and super awesome got kind of boring. They are the only people who see the incompetency of magical Britain and only they can change it. And the fact that how easily they went about it was once again boring.

However, what I think makes this story work is that it is a romance and a well-written one at that. Everything else fades into the background. Harry and Daphne's interaction are so subtly and nicely done that whatever faults the story has it hardly matters all that much.

As a romance it is a good story, I enjoyed reading it. My rating 4/5.

 

This is pretty much Jeconais' in a nutshell. I enjoy the dude's writing (for the most part), but he admits himself that he has a few flaws in his writing, which you partially cover here.

I did enjoy this collection of one-shots, though. And for what it is, it's superb. It's just not anything beyond that. I think I gave it a 4/5 or 5/5 back in the day, and I'm not entirely sure why I posted this, other than the curiosity of seeing why something 2 years old was bumped.