Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley in exchange for a review.

I mostly picked this book up due to the interesting synopsis and cover. I had never heard of the author before. I also knew that I would be getting slow horror and when it worked, it worked. Unfortunately, at points the stories weren't just slow, but glacial. K.K. Monroe shines in their use of interesting plots and very detailed character studies, but if you're looking for horror that will actually unsettle you deeply or that delves into the gorey details, you might have to look elsewhere.

I quite enjoyed the introductory short story "The Reckoning", which somewhat functions as a framing device following a woman waking up in the hospital after an accident. I really enjoyed the prose here. The story is a bit short and I think some more padding could have been interesting here, but it is an interesting start! (tw death, car accident). (4/5)
The Lady in the Lake follows a stressed lawyer when her equally busy laywer boyfriend invites her to his father's cabin near a lake for a getaway. Immediately nightmares start haunting her. Unfortunately this one was quite aprubt and did not manage to build tension as much as I had hoped it would. Most of the scary moments happened in dreams and were so disjointed from what we were presented during the day, that they did not really manage to scare me and the end did not hit as hard as I hoped it would. (tw murder, death, drowning). (2/5)
The Mechanism is at parts incredibly good (the radio show parts, the world building) and then unfortunately kinda ruins that by having an incredibly boring MC and a story that moves very, very slowly until it reaches the big reveal. If this story had been a bit snappier, I think I would have really enjoyed it! I did enjoy the prose and the descriptions of the world a lot. (tw child murder, murder, police brutality, mass murder, death). (3/5)
The Red Light is another story that could be really scary and has a great set up, but is really dragged down by its narrator and its plodding pace. The narrator has an incredibly repeptitive monologue and I got tired of his focus on his "balls cancer" and the "burning in his pecker", as well as his constant repeptition of "Nooooo, sireeee, Bob" very, very fast. Unfortunately this one is by far the story I enjoyed least and it is the longest in the collection. The horror is underexplored (in fact we don't get told about the scariest moments. And we had to work to get there! That felt like an incredible letdown), the narrator is annoying, and the pace is glacial. I think this story could have been cut down by... half? without loosing any important moments of the story or used that extra space to explore the horror more. The end was unsettling and intruiging, but I know I would have enjoyed it more if the rest of the story hadn't been such a slog to get through. (tw cancer, death, mass death). (1/5)
Be Careful of What You find is the last story and compared to the others before it, a short one. It follows a teenanger obessessed with death and corpses, who wants to capture something. A short story that manages to present interesting characters and an interesting monster, all presented with good pacing. Not as scary as I had expected, but I had fun reading it. (4/5)