Tess

There was a nice variety of types of horror stories in this book. Most of them were pretty good but a few didn't feel like horror stories to me and some were a bit overly didactic or unfocused to me. Overall recommend.

Favourites: Reckless Eyeballing by N. K. Jemisin, Flicker by L. D. Lewis, A Bird Sings By The Etching Tree by Nicole D. Sconiers

I thought the last 20% or so of this was pretty good, space action, catharsis without being too pat, but the rest of this was a slog. I'm assuming from how graphic it gets with sexual violence that the intended audience is adults but the main character is a child so it feels very YA in parts. The cyberpunk stuff feels goofy and pointless. The aliens are basically just cobbled together Japanese stereotypes which is kind of weird when there are theoretically Japanese people in this universe (the main character's home ship has a Japanese name!). Zero plot important female characters. Weird time skips. A whole chapter in second person for some reason.

Deeply silly and predictable, this contains a lot of images that the author clearly thought sounded really cool, and some very weird thoughts on women. I wasn't surprised to see in the afterword that this was her debut.

The subject matter was interesting enough but the humour only landed about half the time for me, and it was kind of annoying how all the women were written in relation to men only. I wish the author had trusted the reader a little more instead of spelling everything out.

A really interesting novella about being unable to move on from grief and about immigration and how it affects people and their families. There was a little too much going on for me - the book was already so short and the character I found most interesting wasn't featured much until near the end - but a thought provoking read overall.

I really liked this a lot: a story of various interconnected characters converging on a tragedy that is foreshadowed early on but impossible to look away from. Each character had a unique voice so they were easy to tell apart even though there were so many. It bugged me a bit that some chapters were in first person and some were in third (one even in second!) but not enough to really affect my enjoyment. I'll think about this book for a long time.

This anthology was interesting to see what the different takes on “dark fiction” were. Some were straightforward horror stories, some were noir type stories of people being awful to each other, and others were kind of a mix. I found the first and last few stories to be the strongest, with some weaker ones dragging on for a bit in the middle. There's something for everyone, except maybe the faint of heart.

Favourites: Capgras by Tommy Orange and The Longest Street in the World by Theodore C. van Alst Jr.

There are some great scares here, and some really well done character moments. Overall though, this book is too long (so many things are repeated unnecessarily), every woman is written really badly (but hey, at least the author makes it clear that Big Tits survived!) and the ending was terrible. I don't regret reading it but it's hard to recommend.

Absolutely bizarre story. The endless winter has somehow been both eternal and five years. The endgame villain is an animal spirit defending the environment. The main character (and narrative) is needlessly cruel to her older sister in a way that felt very Narnia to me. A major character dies and it's just nothing.

This was fine, but nothing to write home about. The characters were pretty thin and the writing was nothing special, but the kills were creative and the ending was a little creepy. The stuff about the ghosts didn't really go anywhere and a bunch of dialogue was in italics for no reason.

A short and sweet little romance - I liked the theme of rediscovering music and the relationship between the main character and her daughter. It's nice to see stories like this featuring older characters.

Interesting set of Christmas themed stories and poems published between the turn of the century and the 1950s. Each story is preceded by a short biography of the author and some information about the social context of the story.

The titular story is fantastic and as always I enjoyed the Helene Tursten story, but this is another weirdly mis-marketed holiday anthology. The copy is all about the stories being delightful and funny but most of them are really dark and for some reason a whole bunch of them don't even happen on Christmas?? Just call it winter noir or something.

A surprising amount of heart for a story about evil Christmas lights from space. The voice was cute and the terrible decisions the character made worked because he was eleven. However I noticed a few distracting typos and I found the end a little disappointing.

This book is a sci-fi domestic thriller that takes place over the Christmas holiday. The characters are fun and the mystery keeps you guessing, but a few parts dragged a bit and the ultimate “reveal” was underwhelming. No one's doing “good for her” in the indie space like Faith Gardner, though, and overall I had fun.

As with most anthologies, this one's a bit hit or miss. I loved the concept, with each story featuring different holiday traditions from around the world. The best stories were sweet and fun, but some of the others were weirdly violent or felt pointless. One wasn't even a romance, which is kind of a weird choice. 

Favourites: Mask by Sheryn Munir and Grand Market Bliss by Fiona Zedde

This was a fast paced read with decent tension but it could have been a lot better. All of the POVs felt the same to me (even the dog!) and nothing really surprising happens. The writing style is pretty simple and uninteresting and there were a few obvious errors (misspelled or missing words).

A sweet little middle grade novel about a Deaf girl and her grandmother on an adventure. I liked Iris's interest in radios and sound, and the way she learns a bit about the lives of the adults around her, but the stuff anthropomorphizing the whale comes across pretty maudlin and silly (not by the girl, there are a bunch of whale pov chapters and they felt unnecessary) and near the end she does an extremely dangerous thing (jumping into freezing water) I didn't really like. Overall fine but I wish it had had another round of editing. 

A darkly funny wild ride through the history (and future?) of Korea. You might want to keep a notebook on hand for this one, there are so many interconnected layers.

I liked this better than the previous book in the series, but not quite as much as the first two. There really are a limited number of types of stories that you can tell in this format and I think the series might be hitting a wall. The story about the dog was my favourite.

Kind of an unfortunate anthology, most of the stories were just not that good: either kind of aimless, felt unfinished, or tone deaf in the way the “otherness” was handled. 

Favourites: Where The Lovelight Gleams by Michael Thomas Ford, Miss Infection USA by Shanna Heath and Mud Flappers by Usman T. Malik.

I really liked the format of this, a researcher in the future writing about children's rhymes in relation to a strange event that had happened in a small American town years before. This is the first thing I've read by this author and it made my head spin.

Boring r/nosleep type story with a pointless ending.

This was more exciting than the first story in this collection that I read, but didn't really feel like a complete story.

A character reciting bad poetry (which is in some cases listed as being “by” a character who can't possibly have written it) and being really rude to her tour guide.