Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher.

This is a very fast-paced short horror novella centered around a cursed island and a family lost at sea.
There is a Dual POV as the story follows a sister and a brother on their journey to find each other again. The Dual POV worked really well in giving us interesting insights into the lives of the characters and made them feel very realistic to me.
The story itself is quite short and moves rather fast, which is fine since this is a novella. However, there are quite a few fight scenes that felt too long compared with the rest of the story and so sometimes I did hope for the story to move faster or that the rest of the story had delved into as much detail as the highly descriptive fight/injury scenes did. The switch in pacing made it a bit hard for me to stay focussed at times unfortunately.
Other than that I quite enjoyed the story and particularly the horror was really interesting. It was just explored enough to make sense without dragging the story out and so that was done really well. I also always enjoy a good botanical horror and the author's background in biology did shine through beautifully. I liked the dread the story built and as I already mentioned we get a lot of character building for our two main POVs and so it was easy to care for them and to journey along their fight for survival.
One tiiiiny little nitpick moment that kinda threw me is the fact that when Sybil joins the pirate crew she does so calling herself Mark Read and at that point I was expecting the story to go in a completely different direction. This however just seems to be a little nod towards lady pirates and has nothing to do with the Mary Read of history. This just as a little warning for other Read-ers (:P) so you can adjust your expectations accordingly, since I was just sitting there wondering what purpose the name served.
All in all an enjoyable little novella and a very fast read with really fun botanical horror and an interesting curse.

I also enjoyed that trigger warnings are provided in the novella (death of a parent, alcohol abuse, murder, violence, attempted sexual assault, sexist insults and gore), but I would like to add a little extra trigger warning for contemplation of suicide. Potentially this has already been added to non-ARC versions of the book, but I just felt it necessary to provide it here myself.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher.

I've read one short story by Rae Wilde before (also featured in this short story collection) and so I knew I wanted to check this out and I am very grateful I received the opportunity.
This collection features short stories from the genres of horror, mystery, romance and some folklore and as the title already suggests most of it is feminist/women's horror in some way, shape or form. The various horror genres featured (some stand outs I remember & enjoyed were body horror, cosmic horror, splatter horror and the erotic horror) is quite broad and so I definitely wasn't bored, but some themes do exist more often than others, particularly horror centered around the sea or creatures of the sea played a bigger role, which was interesting for me to find out as it wasn't what I had been expecting at all. If you enjoy any of these horror genres, I can definitely recommend this short story collection to you. The stories are often sapphic or featuring evil men getting punished for their actions, both of which are also things I enjoy.
The prose is incredible and the characters are often very compelling and while I didn't absolutely adore every story in here there there are quite a few standouts including: "John List Would Like to Cancel His Subscription to Omaha Steaks", "I Am Not the Ghost You Wanted", "Between Her Teeth" (my favorite new-to-me piece by Rae Wilde), "Eyes Open, Knees Apart for the End of the World", "Write My Eulogy on the Gloryhole Bathroom Stall" (my previous favorite piece by Rae Wilde), "The Many Lives of Becca and Gem" (especially "Mullberry Silk" & "Common Oleander") and finally, like many other readers will agree, I really enjoyed "Survive the Essix".
Now, as I like to do with short story collections, here's my collection of a short description, some thoughts and feelings and trigger warnings for every short story (also provided in the back of the book!):

*FAV* John List Would Like to Cancel His Subscription to Omaha Steaks: Short and deeply unsettling this story follows a man as he works through his checklist before the Holidays, tw: allusion to child death
Rusalnaya: A short siren horror story with a siren looking for prey, unsettling and I love murderous women, very short though, tw: murder, body horror, sexual content
*FAV* I Am Not the Ghost You Wanted: A messy lesbian relationship made more complicated by the fact that one of them is a ghost, messy and fun, tw: death, cheating, sexual content
Giltiné: A man seeks out a woman after being bitten by a snake, things... escalate from there. Interesting, but a bit short for me. Maybe includes folklore I don't know about? tw: death, gore, sexual content
*FAV* Between Her Teeth: What starts out as a rather typical sacrificing a pretty young woman to the beast turns into hot lesbian King Kong Vore. A very interesting horrorotica. I liked the weird sex. Nothing here progressed in the way I was expecting it, but that made it more interesting. Would like to know more of the story and the lore, but I very much enjoyed what was presented. tw: past sexual assault, murder, vore, cannibalism, sexual content & bodily fluids of the non-sexy kind or normally-non-sexy-but-definitely-sexy-in-a-weird-and-kinky-way-here kind.
A Fine Wife, Indeed: A selkie horror following a man encountering a selkie and wanting to take her as his wife. Rather typical in the way feminist selkie horrors go. I understand why they go that way often, but this one wasn't that interesting to me unfortunately. tw: murder, thoughts about sexual assault
I Gave my Heart to a Hurricane: Pretty much exactly what the title promises with a dash of erotica. Storm chasing but sexy. Fun. tw: death, could be interpreted as a suicide in a way, gore, sexual content
*FAV* Eyes Open, Knees Apart for the End of the World: Everybody deals with an impending apocalypse differently, but one dissatisfied wife decides to make the most of it, fun and I always love messy women! tw: implied mass death, murder, gore, sexual content
A Curse in the Midnight Zone: An Ariel retelling where Ariel and Ursula are two women struggling to survive in an oppressive homophobic existence, deeply sad, but also unfortunately very short. Fun tentacle stuff though. tw: homophobia, gore, sexual content
Backseat Driver: A man goes on a family trip after things have ended with his girlfriend. Something about the navigation system seems off. Fun and builds dread well, but unfortunately feels a bit long for the pay off. tw: murder, gore
*FAV* Write My Eulogy on the Gloryhole Bathroom Stall: This was a piece I've already read (& I can recommend Pleasure In Pain btw) and the reason I wanted to check out more works by the author since it had been one of my favorite pieces in the anthology. It absolutely held up on a reread and is so far also a stand out piece in this collection as well. A gorgeous piece of body horror erotica where cosmic horror, dread and arousal weave together masterfully. tw: gore, self harm/self mutilation, drugs, addiction metaphor, death, blasphemy, sexual content
The Many Lives of Becca and Gem (collection of short stories set in the same universe)
- *FAV* Mullberry Silk: The first short story introduces Becca and Gem, set in a small town of dye-makers, very interesting world building and great tense exploration of this place, I really liked it, tw: murder, suicide
- *FAV* Common Oleander: A more private look into the life of Becca and Gem where we get to know their private Garden and the way they take care of their plants, fun, I love a good poison garden, tw: murder, gore
- Of Ash and Soot: This one offers a bigger look at the rest of the world outside of the small town that Becca and Gem live in after Becca finds a little girl in a burned down building, very tense and I enjoy that it explores the unsettling sides of Becca more and more, tw: child endangerment
- Gemma Prepares to Dive: A story where Gemma follows Becca and finally finds her in a strange little town in a strange little cove, interesting and haunting, but quite different from the previous works in the Becca and Gem stories, but not too different from other works in here, tw: death, implied suicide, internalized homophobia
*FAV* Survive the Essix: A choose-your-own-adventure story following a whaling boat as they find themselves trapped in a storm, still looking for The Big One. I enjoyed the choices provided and I really loved seeing where the journey would lead. tw: whaling, murder, violence, gore, cannibalism, homophobia, mentions of racist stereotypes against Natives

This story follows a journalist called Zoe as she investigates the murder of a trans woman called Paloma (a Muxe, technically a third gender, but in the context of the story a trans female interpretation makes the most sense) and meets a Curandera (a healer) called Feliciana.
Even though Paloma dies in the first sentence of the novel, she haunts the narrative and plays an incredibly important role in the story. As we get to know about Zoe's story, her home life, her sister's traumatic experience, her struggles to become a journalist we also learn about Feliciana's story, her small village, her sister's traumatic experience and her struggles to become accepted as a Curandera, a role normally only permitted to men. Besides being the reason the two women ever meet each other, Paloma plays a big role in Feliciana's growing up, but I still wish she had gotten to play a bit more of a role in the actual story.
This is an incredibly interesting book to read in translation, since many terms have been left in the original language as there are no fitting translations for them. The little preface by the translator helped set the mood for the story for me and was incredibly useful in following the story despite the to me unfamiliar terms.
The story is drenched in men's violence against women, through exclusion from certain fields of work, being judged as inherently less competent than men, features graphic sexual and domestic violence as well as murder and transmisogyny.
One thing I struggled with a bit is the very graphic description of sexual assault and csa in this novel. While I can appreciate a text that focusses on the way trauma causes you to get stuck, circling around a violent event the way the assault of Feliciana's sister here felt over the top graphic, particularly since the person who experienced it is not the person telling the story. I do not think this level of graphic description was necessary to really show how traumatic such an event can be, especially since once it was mentioned Feliciana did not return to it.
I also wish the stories had tied together a bit more closely, because while I enjoyed the parallels between them, it still felt a bit disjointed.
However, I really enjoyed the writing style and found the character studies presented here quite interesting and if you can handle graphic descriptions of assault you might enjoy it a bit more than I did.
TW: sexual assault, csa, graphic descriptions of rape, transphobia, transmisogyny, murder, violence, domestic violence