booktribe's Reviews (603)

Wow… This collection was amazing! I went in with such high hopes and it DELIVERED! So many of the stories were truly terrifying and had me on the edge of my seat! (If you’re scary, don’t read this collection before bed lol) And even the stories that weren’t terrifying were still great horror stories!

Go into this collection knowing that it will be an Indigenous horror collection, but not all of the stories are “never whistle at night” stories. I think the description is a little misleading because I went in thinking all the stories would have that theme, but they don’t. Several stories do have that theme, but there are lots of stories with different elements and types of horror!

With any anthology there will be hits and misses but the hits were so amazing like Snakes are Born in the Dark by D. H. Trujillo, Kushtuka by Mathilda Zeller, Before I Go by Norris Black plus so many more, that I HAD to give this collection 5 stars!! 

Every horror lover needs to pick this collection up right now!!!

**Individual story ratings:**

📚Kushtuka by Mathilda Zeller: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚White Hills by Rebecca Roanhorse: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Navajos Don’t Wear Elk Teeth by Conley Lyons: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Wingless by Marcie R. Rendon: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (TW: child abuse, graphic animal cruelty & death)

📚Quantum by Nick Medina: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Hunger by Phoenix Boudreau: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Tick Talk by Cherie Dimaline: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚The Ones Who Killed Us by Brandon Hobson: DNF (Too all over the place)

📚Snakes are Born in the Dark by D. H. Trujillo: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (my absolute FAVORITE story of the collection; TW: racism, racial slur)

📚Before I Go by Norris Black: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (the scariest story!)

📚Night in the Chrysalis by Tiffany Morris: DNF

📚Behind Colin’s Eyes by Shane Hawk: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Heart Shaped Clock by Kelli Jo Ford: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (TW: drug use, domestic violence, child abandonment)

📚Scariest. Story. Ever by Richard Van Camp: ⭐️⭐️✨

📚Human Eaters by Royce K. Young Wolf: ⭐️⭐️

📚The Longest Street in the World by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. : DNF (too weird lol)

📚Dead Owls by Mona Susan Power: ⭐️⭐️✨

📚The Prepper by Morgan Talty: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning by Kate Hart: DNF (I’m so bored)

📚Sundays by David Heska Wanbli Weiden: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Tw: sexual assault of a child, residential schools, suicide, child death)

📚Eulogy for a Brother, Resurrected by Carson Faust: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Night Moves by Andrea L. Rogers: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Capgras by Tommy Orange: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

📚The Scientist’s Horror Story by Darcie Little Badger: ⭐️ (a COMPLETE waste of time)

📚Collections by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Limbs by Waubgeshig Rice: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

DNF at 55%

So the essays/chapters in this book were hit or miss for me. I connected more with some than others. I enjoyed the discussions of self love & community. And one of the essays really helped me have a revelation about self love and the way I treat myself & it is something that will impact me positively forever. There were multiple beautiful quotes. And even though I was connecting with some essays more than others, I was still enjoying the novel. Until I started Chapter 7: Greed: Simply Love…

My first problem with this chapter was that she begins the chapter talking about how she’s disappointed that these days people will kill you for a designer coat or tennis shoes, and then she continues on to say this: 

“Whether poor or rich, in the mid-fifties most citizens in our nation felt it was the best place in the world to live because it was a democracy, a place where human rights mattered.”

How can you, as a Black person, say that human rights mattered in the 50’s? Whose human rights mattered??? Certainly not ours. Yes the fact that someone will kill you for a designer coat is terrible, but in the 50’s they killed us just because they felt like it, so how is that better??? I genuinely hoped that later in the chapter she would combat this thought of the 50’s being better, but she never did. She let it stand. (Unless she did in the last couple of pages, because I did not finish this essay)

And my second problem with this essay is the condescension that was radiating from the page. I cannot stand people who say “money can’t buy you happiness”. Those are usually people who have never been poor enough to miss out on basic necessities that everyone should have. And I felt the most condescension when she was talking about Lil Kim and Monica Lewinsky. Like she was looking down on them & making assumptions about them for valuing money. And I also have a feeling that bell hooks knew nothing of Lil Kim outside of the interview she mentioned having with her (which I haven’t seen, I’ve only seen it referenced in this chapter). Kim did value love, she just might not have valued it the way bell hooks finds relatable. 

I just felt a huge sense of condescension from this whole chapter and I have no desire to continue reading. (Plus, I don’t know why I thought I would enjoy this anyway. I’m very antisocial and misanthropic, I do not like people lmao)

Where Sleeping Girls Lie is a young adult mystery about Sade Hussein, new girl at the prestigious boarding school: Alfred Noble Academy, who discovers dark secrets amongst the school after her roommate disappears without a trace. 

This was one of my top 3 most anticipated releases for 2024 and I have some things I loved about it and some things I hated. Let’s get into it.

I was hooked from literally the first page! (Honestly from the author’s note! I really appreciated the mention of Oluwatoyin Salau) The writing gripped me immediately and I was IN LOVE! I loved the atmosphere of the novel. The dark academia vibe is going to get me every time! I loved several of the characters. Sade, Persephone, & Baz were so amazing and their chemistry was perfect! I enjoyed other characters as well! As a huge Mean Girls fan (it’s literally my favorite movie of all time), I absolutely LOVED all the subtle, and not-so-subtle, Mean Girls references! And I also loved the unreliable narrator feel to Sade’s POV!

But the pacing of this novel was sooooo slow! Even toward the beginning of the novel, I was loving it so much, but it felt like no matter how much I was reading I couldn’t make any progress. I feel like the book could’ve been at least 60 pages shorter. And it’s not that a whole lot of unnecessary things were happening, it’s that they should’ve happened quicker & more succinctly. I also don’t like that it took so long for us to know ANYTHING. I feel like it would’ve been much better if the story unfolded little by little rather than a whole bunch of build up and then everything gets dumped on you at the end. Speaking of the end, the end was the slowest part… We went in circles forever and it just kept going and going. I just wanted them to get to the point. And by the time the truth was finally revealed, I didn’t care anymore. Plus the reveals were disappointing. My theories were way more interesting than what actually happened. And I was left with several questions at the end. Multiple things were alluded to as part of the mystery and then were never revisited. I think this novel would be better as an hour-and-a-half long movie because the pacing could be much faster and the story can stay interesting!

I do appreciate the commentary in this novel and I enjoyed several things about it like the characters and atmosphere, but the pacing really dampened my enjoyment. Maybe I was comparing it to this author’s previous novel, Ace of Spades, because it was super fast paced and I expected the same energy in this one. But slow pace never really works for me, so people that enjoy slow burn mysteries may enjoy this more!

Thank you to Netgalley and Feiwel and Friends for this arc. All opinions are my own.

TW: sexual assault (non-graphic but a recurring theme), misogyny, suicide, death of a parent, child neglect, domestic abuse (briefly mentioned), and discussions of grief

Wow… Just wow… This was my number 1 most anticipated release of 2023 and it DELIVERED! The creep factor in every story was high and the spooky vibes were immaculate! The stories ranged from suspenseful to eerie to terrifying! Any anthology is going to have hits and misses, but the hits in this collection HIT, and there were way more of them than misses! There were so many amazing stories that it was hard to pick my favorite! We have Southern gothic tales, Bloody Mary vibes, serial killers, and more! Any kind of horror story you’re looking for can be found in this collection! (Except vampires, I would’ve loved some vampires lol) This is a perfect read for Halloween, so make sure you get it on October 17th!

Ratings:

📚Lights by Kalynn Bayron: ⭐️⭐️ (Tw: child abuse)

📚Be Not Afraid by Ashia Monet: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚All My Best Friends Are Dead by Liselle Sambury: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚The Teeth Come Out at Night by Sami Ellis: ⭐️ (go ahead and skip this one😬)

📚I love your eyes by Joel Rochester: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚The Consumption of Vienna Montrose by Joelle Wellington: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (All imma say is… Imagine the splinters🤭😭)

📚The Landscape of Broken Things by Brent Lambert: ⭐️⭐️

📚Mother, Daughter, and the Devil by Donyae Coles: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📚Papa Pearlie by Ryan Douglass: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Tw: Slavery & homophobia)

📚No Harm Done by Circe Moskowitz: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (My fave story! Tw: homophobia)

Average rating: 3.7 ⭐️’s
Overall rating: 5 ⭐️’s!

Thank you Chicago Review Press/Amberjack Publishing for this arc! All opinions are my own.

I read the first book in this series, We Are the Origin, last year and really enjoyed it, so I couldn’t wait for the sequel! However, this one just did not work for me. I DNF’d at 44% in. 

There were a few things I did enjoy, so we’ll start with those. I always have and always will love the shaders! And I especially loved the baby shader Ronka who was introduced in this novel. So adorable!😍 I loved the chapter headings and highlighted several of them! The writing of those was gorgeous. And I was very intrigued by some *reveals* that happened in this story. (I obviously can’t say what because of spoilers lol) I found those very interesting and I thought they would move the story forward.

But honestly, I was almost halfway done with this book and NOTHING had happened. All they did was sit in the woods and talk… It felt like one long scene. They didn’t change locations, no action had happened since the first few pages, most of the conversations that were had were either unimportant or could’ve been had later in the book after the actual story started, NOTHING was happening. The story did not move forward at all. And I thought once the *reveals* that I mentioned earlier happened, that the story would move along, but nope, they’re still just sitting in the woods talking… 

I also did not enjoy how much meaner (and weaker) the characters were in this novel. I understand that the main character, Brandi, is not supposed to be nice, and I enjoyed her not-so-niceness in the first book, but in this one she’s a straight bully. And Sarah, who is another character that I liked in the first book was so much weaker in this one. And don’t get me started on Noble, who is even meaner than Brandi. I just couldn’t stand any of the characters in this book, and that was very disappointing because I enjoyed some of these characters in the last one.

This was just a disappointing sequel for me. I tried to push through so I could continue the series, but I just can’t. Maybe another day when I can prepare myself for the slow pace, I’ll pick this back up so that I can try the next book. 

Thank you to the author for this arc. All opinions are my own.

The first chapter of this book had me hooked! The writing intrigued me and I had to know what happened! But sadly, I had to DNF this book at 51%, I couldn’t continue. The story was so incredibly slow. Sometimes I was interested despite the slow nature of the novel and at other times I just didn’t care what was happening in the slightest. I knew going into the book that this will probably be a slow burn horror, but the story could’ve been condensed A LOT! There are a lot of unnecessary scenes and the writing is so descriptive that it’s boring. I don’t need to know every little detail of every little thing. The book is only 200+ pages, but I feel like I’ve read 400 pages of nothing. The first chapter interested me so much that I still want to know what happened, but not enough to get through another half of this glacially paced book…

Thank you Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.

TW (up to 51% in): child death, death of a parent, snakes, animal death, self harm, pedophilia 

The story is interesting. I still want to know what’s going on, but not enough to deal with all these annoying characters. All the emphasis is put on them and they have such uninteresting personalities. Also there are a lot of characters and they all have code names and I can’t keep up with who is who. If the EMPHASIS wasn’t on the characters I could finish for the story, but I can’t do these characters.