The anthology as a whole (4 stars):
This horror anthology started strong, with some wonderful short stories that unsettled me to my very core. This said, many were just too short to flesh out their wonderful ideas and left me wanting. I'd love to read more from this author. I love the way she writes. The way she bleeds imagery into a shiver that runs down your spine... A brilliant collection of domestic horror stories that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to a friend.

Individual short story reviews (Average rating 3.75 stars)
Table Scraps
A solid, unsettling story to start the book. I guessed the premise straight away but I've been watching

Hannibal

recently so that's probably why! The dog/title tie in was a nice touch for an unsettling end.
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Emily
Bloody hell. Like, this is actually creepy. I thought for a while that maybe it was

a cuckoo situation

, or that Emily was

an alien who made someone care for her

. Having finished it,

she could be anything

. I'm just hoping I won't wake up to her standing over me tonight...!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Mouthful
A sweet, almost comforting monster story. Enjoyable but not scary in the slightest.
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Changes
I'm confused. But in the most delicious way! It seemed creepy to begin with and I love the manner in which it was written. A distinct lack of explanation in any form leaves your mind reeling in it's aftermath.
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Make a Home of Me
Make a Home of Me is almost gothic in it's conclusion. Whilst reading it, I was struck by Vanessa Santos' frequent use at the scary thing left unsaid, leaving the reader just enough to make their own fears true. Whilst in Changes I found this a little lacking, in Make a Home of Me, readers are given just enough to wonder. Though

the house itself

isn't particularly sinister, it's the not knowing what was

on the youngest child's 'special' notes

that makes it so. A classic horror story with an ending that leaves you wanting more
⭐⭐⭐⭐

As Above, So Below
This one feels very COVID-19 coded. It reminds me in a way of the book 'Our Wives Under the Sea' but without the suspense and body horror. I can't say that this one was scary, or really all that intriguing. I didn't care for the characters (they just don't have the time in such a small amount of pages to be fleshed out enough) and the ending was too tidy for a plot with no answers.
⭐⭐

Riverquick, Saltfresh
There wasn't enough about the characters to make you feel for them in any way. The

parents locking her up

bit didn't seem to have any relevance and it was confusing that

the parents were referencing the water taking their first daughter when she could easily have been kidnapped ect (as it appears no one but the MC saw her fall in/was there?)

. The final ideas at the end were more atmospheric though and that saved the story a little.
⭐⭐⭐

The Wall
A much better story for being that tiny bit longer. The characters felt more real, with some horror aspects grounded in reality. This said, I'm not sure what the point of the ending was? Perhaps just a way to tie together an anthology under this title?
⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book is a mixed bag. On one hand, the writing feels fresh for a romantasy. Drawing on fairy tales like Rumpelstiltskin and Beauty and the Beast, the book finds Ella trapped in the fae realm by a bargain made with their morally grey prince. She's just about learned to use alchemy to turn things into gold, but here? She's tasked with turning gold BACK into what it should be, something she's not sure is possible.

It was a quick, rushed jump from Ella hating Ruskin to loving him. For a FMC whose main drive was getting back to her father, all her character-driving motivation was lost with a swift jump to 'the other side'. The characters have barely met after their rocky, kidnapping start before they fall in love. It just felt off. This swift drop in morals is a key factor in my inability to connect with the characters.

I've seen a few people comparing the book to Sarah J Maas, and I disagree. The storytelling is much better than that. This said, it's easy to see why this comparison has been made. The author appears to have lifted all of her favourite bits from other popular romantasy books and added them here. This is okay if you take an idea and run in a completely different direction. After all, some of the best stories are made this way. Whilst Zara Storm manages to do this to an extent, it's unfortunate that the book is too similar to these books in a rather big way. The obvious one is Callie Hart's Quicksilver, another fae meets alchemy romantasy. Unlike Quicksilver, this book felt more predictable, despite the characters' motivations being explained poorly. Unfortunately, this book will always be heavily compared, especially when it doesn't exceed those before.

However, as I've mentioned, this was an easy listen. I'm sure the next book will develop the main characters further. The narrator did a good job of making the character voices unique. Some of the minor characters, like Destan, were very enjoyable. It's not a dark romance or particularly smutty. It felt like something that would have made a better Young Adult book with less smut included. I wish I had more good to say. It's not a bad book, it just gets easily lost in the sea of similar romantasy titles.

Where the story may go next is intriguing. That said, though this book ends on a cliffhanger and I'm a sucker for reading second books, I can't see myself picking up anymore of this series unless I was given a very good reason. This doesn't use the ideas of others well enough to be lacking in originality.

Thank you to Zara Storm, Victory Editing NetGallery Co-op and NetGallery for the opportunity to leave an honest review. 

For a trans woman in the UK, there's immense bravery in putting your soul on the page. Love in Exile is a heartfelt exploration that gives those who come after something that Shon Faye didn't have herself. The book's core insight and ability to look at oneself tongue-in-cheek are outstanding. When most think of love, they think of their romantic relationships, but arguably, the key part of Shon's writing doesn't come from these experiences; it comes when she talks about the other ways to love in all its forms. From friendships to motherhood, these insights leap from the page.

Having already read extensively on these subjects, expecially from queer authors, the book didn't give me anything new in the way I thought it would. Perhaps the most unexpected chapter was around religion, something I wouldn't have expected to be included. Although an odd one to include last, the subject of spirituality as a form of love is refreshing to see in a book like this. As more and more turn away from organised religion, we lose the community and spirituality that comes alongside it. Though Shon largely speaks of her return to a form of individually practised Christianity, I wholeheartedly hope that this chapter helps people to think about their version of spirituality. For me, it takes the simple form of spending time outside in nature. Though Shon only speaks about Catholicism, spirituality doesn't have to equal religion.

This said, I was left feeling that Love in Exile could easily be the start of something more. Alone, it isn't quite there. Though saying this, does there need to be? Nothing particularly 'out there' is included, but this doesn't seem to have been the intention. It's a book for those still finding their way, and goodness me, is it not a breath of fresh air to find a book on love that feels like a healthy goal is in sight? When did you last read a decent tome on ponderings of love in all its forms, let alone one from a Trans female perspective? Its lack of further analysis into love is exactly why it has so many five star reviews for being concise and lacking in the waffle that books about love usually thrive on. 

Quite often these days, I read a book that I'm sure my younger self would have idolised. However, being that I'm no longer the hurt young soul I once was, Shon Faye's analysis of love in all its forms doesn't quite hit the same way. A younger me would have been hit much harder by Shon's effortless dry humour, vulnerable honesty and lived experience. But today? It's knowing that the next person to pick up her book will experience it the way a younger version of myself would have.

Love in Exile is an exploration of love filled with heartfelt insight and honesty. It'd make the perfect gift and would have the potential to start the healing of a heart. In its very essence, it's a lesson in loving oneself.


A big thank you to Shon Faye, Penguin Press UK - Allen Lane and NetGallery for the opportunity to leave an honest review.

I'm not sure how I feel about this poetry collection. Part of the issue might be that I listened to it as an audiobook, something I don't usually do for poetry. Whilst I believe that listening to a poet speak their words aloud in the manner they intended is the most powerful way to consume poetry, listening to these one after the other while I tried to tackle some jobs wasn't the best thing to do.

This is a poetry collection about love. It's about engulfing passion, heartwrenching loss, and all the feelings that follow. I can see it being a collection that would stay with someone forever if they were in the throes of heartbreak. Again, another avenue to suggest that these poems would have hit me harder (or more deeply) at a different point in my life. This said, each poem is brimming with emotion, which pours out as you read, honest and raw. It would be impossible to read them and not be hit with the deep intimacy of Carol Ann Duffy's words.

As it stands, I found the hour I listened to these poems a depressing one. The imagery is bleak, and the collection focuses on the death of love. Those great loves lost.

Unfortunately, saying all this, it's neither the passion nor the imagery that I think of when I consider these poems. They're just rather underwhelming. Quite samey, with only one note being clanged throughout a piece which should have been a symphony. Yes, there's some beautiful imagery, and she appeals to anyone who's ever lost someone, but it often feels like there's no substance beyond a pretty word. The only way I can describe it is that the writing felt in line with the 'how to write a poem' formula we were taught in school. Nothing screamed this is something special beyond shared raw feeling.

Even the repetition of certain words (eg, something like loss, loss, loss rather than the word being repeated spread throughout the poem) is a little grating. It happened frequently enough that it screamed high school poetry even more. This alone threw me out of the moment the poems were trying to evoke.

Oh my. It's not often that a short story manages to be as deliciously creepy as this one did. Goodness, even most full-length horror stories struggle!

This is an absolute classic, an iconic tale of madness told in less than 100 pages.

I'm not one for reading blurbs, and for The Yellow Wallpaper? Honestly, I'm rather glad that this is the case. The blurb portrays a story of mystery, questioning whether our narrator is going mad or if she's been possessed by a sinister supernatural source. In my opinion, this is a story about

madness

and that the implied

supernatural

side doesn't come into the story at all. This is the ultimate story of

postpartum psychosis

, and seeing our narrator slowly descend into madness is both as real as it is disturbing. 

As with all stories of this age, we must always consider the book a product of its time. With most stories, this would include acknowledging how it has aged poorly. However, for The Yellow Wallpaper, let us consider how radical it must have been for a story with these themes to have been published in 1892! Involved in the first wave of feminism, Charlotte Perkins Gilman has written a defining piece of literature highlighting female mental and physical health in a period when women didn't have the right to vote in the USA (where the author is from).

I highly recommend reading this short story; it's an immediate ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ read. That ending! Creepy as can be. In so few pages, The Yellow Wallpaper sews a feminist tale of the dismissal of female mental (and physical) health in a society that cares not. For a story published in 1892, is it not terrifying to consider that little has changed?

That about sums it up, to be honest.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is an interesting book. I've long been told that it's boring as hell and for all it's being banned and being a source of ridicule, they barely even hold hands. Having read it... It's not that at all.

I can see why people find it boring. Scandalous, smutty scenes are interlaced with large passages of conversation about the world and the role of men and women within it. I've seen people say that D.H. Lawrence clearly had a lot to say but didn't know how to say it, but honestly, I think he did. He talks at length about social classes and gender roles, as well as the world in their present time and his thoughts on what will come to pass next. All of this is dispersed by the imagery of Lady Chatterley sitting in the corner of the room, meekly required to be an audience to the male ponderings whilst not allowed to join in herself.

And yet, all this is lost amid the smut. Oh goodness, the sex scenes are a thing in themselves. Lady Chatterley's Lover is largely endless sex scenes with a bloke who hates women for what they make him feel, almost as much as he hates himself. This is interwoven with Mellors' monologues on class and women. Yet Lady Chatterley fawns over him, her vibe being of a 'silly' woman obsessed with a subpar man, for why wouldn't a woman be?

Each sex scene seems to include Mellors and Lady Chatterley weaving flowers into the pubes whilst Mellors pretends his penis is another entity with a name and one can assume, it's own little job. Perhaps as Mellors works in the Chatterley's gardens, little Mellors is working on his own part of the Lady's gardens. Bad jokes aside, whilst this is often described as literary or high-brow smut, it's definitely lower than the level you could find on Wattpad.

Let us remember that this book was outrageous for 1928. D.H. Lawrence's prose is beautiful, and he weaves a tale of forbidden love that still has us talking about it almost 100 years later. Perhaps it's that the history around this book is more interesting than the book itself. There's lot to feel indifferent to, but at the end of the day, the characters are complex and the situation messy. We can all relate to the need for connection with another and a desire for the greener grass over yonder.

All in all, for a classic that's still talked about today, it's not life-changing. I didn't love this, and I didn't hate it, so ⭐⭐⭐ from me. I'd probably describe Lady Chatterley's Lover as a horror story, rather than a romance or a classic. After all, in its heart, it's about the horror of misogyny and hetronomative mundanity.