ausfangirlreads's Reviews (523)

“Dying wasn't so bad, not really. Not when you could go out like this, on a summer's evening with the fireflies winking in the trees. She always thought dying would be a scream into a void, a thrashing, a searing. Not this slow and sleepy drip.”

Birds, ghosts, murders and things that go bump in the night, what more could you ask for when looking for a horror/ thriller anthology?

I had this anthology sitting on my shelf for a while and have picked it up many times over the years to read it, but it took me until this year and me setting myself the goal of reading all the anthologies on my shelf to actually read it.

If I’m going to be totally honest with you the main reason I bought this anthology was because I saw that Jay Kristoff had written a story and I was dying to read some of his horror writing. I also noticed that there were a few popular authors whose works I haven’t read yet, so I thought this would be a good test to see if I would enjoy their writing style.

Slasher Girls and Monster Boys is a collection of 14 short stories written by a collection of talented writers. These stories are inspired by movies and books, with all of them mentioned at the end of every story. This to me was a great thing to include as it really helped me understand where the authors got their inspiration.

The stories included in this anthology were...
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 Flicker, The Fingers, The Beat, The Sigh by April Genevieve Tucholke
Far Girl With A Knife by Jonathan Meberry
Sleepless by Jay Kristoff
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

With any anthology there are stories you like and some you don’t, but for me I found that all the stories interested me, I didn’t find myself wanting to know how much of the story was left or disliking any authors writing style. This is rare for me as I find myself a little picky with writing styles, but I believe that my love for horror is so big that I didn’t even register the change in style and just kept reading the stories.

My top five stories (in no particular order) were, Hide-and-Seek by Megan Shepherd, In The Forest Dark and Deep by Carrie Ryan, Sleepless by Jay Kristoff, Stitches by A.G. Howard & The Dark, Scary Parts and All by Danielle Paige.

These stories were so creative and while reading I found that I couldn’t read them fast enough, I was dying to know what happened next and where the stories were heading. To me that makes a great horror/ thriller story.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I would recommend this collection to any lovers of horror or thriller, this collection had so many highlights and I have already recommended a few of these short stories to my friends. One of those being Hide-and-Seek, which as you can see was one of my favourites.
It was just so damn good! If you get anything from this review it would be to go and read that story it was so great. I actually might go reread it now.

Happy reading everyone!
Jess

Actual Rating 2.5

I've been exploring and trying to branch out in the types poetry I read, and even though I did enjoy some on Lana Del Rey's poetry, this whole book wasn't for me.

I loved the mix of poetry and photography, the photos taken by Lana really pulled you into the themes of the book.

The one thing I really disliked is the last few pages that were blank, In such a beautiful book it would have been better to fill those pages with more of Lana's photography, then leaving space for the reader to write their own work.

Such a great graphic novel! The story was a great mix of humour, action and drama and I loved all the characters!
I would definitely read more of Noelle's comics and will be looking out for more of her work.