3 stars
| Overall, I enjoyed this collection. As with any book of short stories, there are going to be stories that really resonate with you and stories you don’t care about all that much. By far, my favorites in this book were Victoria Schwab‘s “Death Knell” and Samantha Shannon‘s “Marigold”. “Death Knell” was one of the most beautifully written stories I have ever read and I enjoyed it immensely. Immediately after reading it, I insisted on reading it aloud to my husband (who is not a big reader) and he also loved it. “Marigold” is also very good and I liked the exploration of women’s oppression and perspectives on evil presented in it. I also enjoyed Soman Chainani‘s “Gwen and Art and Lance”, which surprised me because I’m not a huge fan of stories told through email/text. This one did a great job of pulling the reader in and I loved the the modern reinterpretation. Aside from those, most of the stories were just okay. I don’t think there were any that I really hated, but many of them just didn’t interest me that much. I will say that I do not like psychopath stories so that made some of them immediately distasteful for me. But overall, the stories were well-written. I just mathed out my ratings for each individual story and the majority of them were 2 stars for me. Many of them started with a good idea, I just didn’t really that they pushed it far enough. The average rating was 2.7, which I bumped up to 3 stars. I did really like the idea of Booktubers challenging authors on specific stories. It was interesting to see the author’s interpretation of the challenge and some of them really excelled at it. An interesting collection that had a few truly amazing stories in it. Also, that cover is gorgeous. Goodreads |