Well this really disappointed me. I had this book on my shelf for over a year and when I decided to take part in the Halloween Readathon I thought it was the perfect time to dive in. There are so many fantastic authors involved in this anthology that I thought it was bound to be fantastic but it just fell flat for me.

Maybe my expectations were just too high. I don’t know. But what I found was that most of the stories in this anthology didn’t scare me in the slightest, some of them confused me but none of them made me dread turnings the lights out which is what I had been expecting.

That being said, there were one or two stand out stories in this anthology. I really enjoyed The Girl Without A Face by Marie Lu and Sleepless by Jay Kristoff. Both of these stories had me gripped until I got to the end. My absolute favourite story was In the Forest Dark and Deep by Carrie Ryan. This was the only story I gave 5*’s too and that’s because even now it still scares me. It is a very creepy, murderous take on the classic Alice in Wonderland and I’ll certainly never look at tea parties in the same way again.

Here is a breakdown of all my ratings:

The Birds of Azalea Street by Nova Ren Suma – ★★
In the Forest Dark and Deep by Carrie Ryan – ★★★★★
Emmeline by Cat Winters – ★
Verse Chorus Verse by Leigh Bardugo – ★★
Hide-and-Seek by Megan Shepherd – ★★★
The Dark, Scary Parts and All by Danielle Paige – ★★
The Flickering, The Fingers, The Beat, The Sigh by April Genevieve Tucholke – ★★★
Fat Girl with a Knife by Jonathan Maberry – ★★
M by Stefan Bachmann – ★
The Girl Without a Face by Marie Lu – ★★★★
A Girl Who Dreamed of Snow by McCormick Templeman – ★
Stitches by A. G. Howard – ★★★
On the I-5 by Kendare Blake – ★★★

Don’t get me wrong, the stories are not at all badly written they just weren’t the creepy horror stories I was hoping for and I’m sure others will enjoy this anthology. It just wasn’t for me.