The Monkey's Paw

Summary: In this eerie short story, a magical charm falls into the hands of the White family and affects its members in ways that they never would have imagined.

Nice little story telling us to be careful for what we wish for. I never read it before but everybody knows the story. However, I liked Pet Sematary better though.

Rating: 1.75 leaves out of 5
Characters: 2.5/5
Cover: 0/5
Story: .5/5
Writing: 4/5
Genre: Horror/Short Story
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: No

I was highly disappointed in this short story. A lot of hype for it and it fell super flat.

Man, that paw is a dick. What the heck, paw!!! Of course “be careful what you wish for” if the magical object bestowing your wishes is an absolute asshole and chooses the worst possible interpretation of what you could mean. Or just picks an orthogonally horrible thing to happen to you while granting your wish.

Anyway, evocatively written - full of horror! Reading this at night, I was like, oooh spooky. Thinking about it in the light of day, I'm more like, wtf that paw was a real asshole. At least, I thought the first wish - £200, please - would turn out to be a bad idea because, I dunno, mo money mo problems. Not because some completely manufactured attendant tragedy would be needed to get that cash.

I'm sure I've read this classic short story before in some form, but gave it a re-read. Going through a bit of a classic short story phase.

So glad I sought this out as I likely would have read some form of retelling. The delicious foreshadowing/atmosphere in the very beginning in the form of a chess game.