Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart is a stellar collection of 13 stories (and one incredible bestiary–more on that later) from the spectacularly creative and brilliant mind of GennaRose Nethercott, who wrote the equally spectacular novel Thistlefoot. 

I don’t think I’ve read a collection by a single author where I loved so many stories to the extent I loved the stories in this one. With one exception (Fox Jaw), I ate every story in this book up with a really sharp grapefruit spoon and then licked the bowl clean. 

A quick summary of my thoughts on the remaining stories:

Sundown at the Eternal Staircase - Spectacularly eerie, fascinating, and great symbolism on how some people are just heading in different directions in life.

A Diviner’s Abecedarian - Tween girls can be mean as hell when not in possession of the sight. Give them the sight and that’s just horrifying. 

The Thread Boy - Poignant, emotional, and magical story about a life well-lived even though there was pain.

The War of Fog - I read in a book coming out soon that war is a place, not a time. This story reminds me of that. War is endless and eternal and you’re stuck there. 

Drowning Lessons - Cynical, sad, but neat story about what it’s like to be responsible for a sibling’s well-being.

The Autumn Kill - This one is angry, visceral, and vengeful. I loved the ending.

A Lily is a Lily - This one is hard to sum up in little words. Let’s just say it’s a haunting story about what can happen when we build people up in our minds so much they take up our entire existence. 

Dear Henrietta - Provocative, creepy, and downright wicked. Dude, this one is good. 

Possessions - Don’t mess around with sketchy witchcraft books you find at thrift stores. This one is hard to describe but it’s beautifully written.

Homebody - Awful to read, awful to describe, awful to think about. It’s sad and tense and made me want to punch something. 

A Haunted Calendar - Funny, horrific, and imaginative.

The Plums at the End of the World - This was incredible. It’s heartbreaking, evocative, and all about how people fear anything different.

My last note is on the titular “story”, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart. It isn’t a story so much as a bestiary and it’s the crown jewel of this collection. Complete with eerie, creep-tastic sketches, each beast is named and described with short, incredible paragraphs. They’re utterly fantastic in every way. I couldn’t get enough of them. The bestiary is practically worth the price of admission. 

This collection isn’t to be missed.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.