The depictions of agoraphobia, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and fear of abandonment felt very authentic, and I actually found them more interesting than the overall story and mystery.

That said, I enjoyed the story and the many themes it touched on.

DNF

The main character is exhausting!

I'm a life-long horror fan, and whilst I enjoyed the horror references, the underlying assumption that you can either be a horror fan or normal was extremely irritating. 

Also, some of the slasher points were incorrect, i.e., revenge always being the slasher's motivation. 

Very little actually occurs in the first half of the book and what interesting things do happen are relayed to us via Jade's secondhand information so you don't even get to read the actual parts that might have been exciting.

There was just enough to make me a little curious as to where the story was going and how it would end but I knew that once I stopped reading that I wouldn't be picking the book back up again.

A decent enough read. 

It started off fairly slow but managed to pick up speed just in time to stop me from losing interest. 

I liked the variety of supernatural beings in the tale, and the historical setting felt well-considered and authentic. Though I enjoyed it, it doesn't inspire a re-read. 

DNF

The story centres around five main characters - a set of twins, their best friends, and an unwanted tag-along. 

The author seems to want you to dislike the tag-alone but as far as I'm concerned, the tag-along, April, was the only decent person and the author's attempts to make the reader dislike her just made me like her even more and the other characters even less. 

I made it halfway through the book before being unable to go on. I only made it halfway in the hopes that the main characters, excluding April, would meet horrific deaths. 

The few moments of horror were actually pretty great, but unfortunately, this book was more romantic drama than horror. 

An okay read. 

The plot was interesting enough, but it felt like the story relied too heavily on the protagonist's scripted ignorance and inability to intuit things correctly. 

I also found some of the 'secrets' to be overly contrived.

I lost interest during all the post-conclusion stuff and skipped the last few pages. Once the main story had concluded, I wasn't interested enough to see what happened/would happen to the remaining characters. 

This is the second book by Stephen Graham Jones that I have really wanted to like but just didn't enjoy. His ideas are great, but there's something lost in the execution of those ideas that make his stories feel like they're constantly just missing the mark.

A collection of 18 stories, thematically linked yet very distinct, written by a Chinese/Australian/American author. 

The stories touch on themes of loss, love, fetishization, racism, abuse, and especially the complex relationship between mothers and daughters. 

It's told like a collection of memories, and whilst I didn't understand all of them, I still found each one intriguing and mesmerising in its own way.

This was a really interesting and enjoyable read. 

I appreciated the author's scepticism and critical analysis as well as their empathy and compassion. 

I think sceptics and believers alike would enjoy this book.

I found this book really interesting. 

The author's insight and knowledge of the psychic industry was really eye-opening and his openness about how he operated, conned, and faked his career is fascinating. 

Unfortunately, the author's habit of objectifying women and body shaming people soured the book for me.

I don't know what it is like to be a Black woman, so my take on this story could be way off, but there were a lot of things in this book that felt really off to me. 

Like how all three women felt as though they were being portrayed as *needing* men. As though their worth was determined by their proximity to men, especially white men. 

Whilst I'm aware that Black women are frequently made to feel this way, I would have liked the book to counter this falsity instead of buying into it.

Plus, using autism as the excuse for Jonny's toxic behaviour was just plain offensive.