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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
All the stories were really cool. I just wish at least some of them had been a little longer. Still a good read though! I always love her work.
Read this review and more on my blog at [Roxie Writes].
'Small Horrors: A Collections of Fifty Creepy Stories' by Darcy Coates
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5
Finished on April 1, 2017
Read with Kindle Unlimited
FREE on Kindle Unlimited | $3.99 on Kindle | $16.99 in Paperback
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Something mimics human voices as it lures you into the woods.
One of the morgue's corpses is missing.
Your friend wants to meet late at night, but they're not acting like themselves.
Immerse yourself in the macabre, the gothic, and the chilling with this collection of fifty short stories.
This collection includes the stories:
- The Dog's Grave Digger
- Knocker
- Sixth Floor
- The Sightless
- Flotsam
- Great Aunt Enid
- Red Morning
- Footsteps in the Night
- Surf
- Those Who Live in the Woods
- Music Box
- Ghost Town
- Magpie Girl
- Hazard Lights
- The Resident
- Host
- Snowbound
- Red Oak House
- Overheard
- An Empty Church
- The Monster and the Moors
- Angel of Mercy
- Tune
- Room for Rent
- Snow Hunting
- Witch's Book
- The Woman in the Morgue
- Undeparted
- Doll
- Left Behind
- Underhouse
- Toxic
- The Last Bus
- House for Sale
- Diagen
- Bunker
- Skin House
- Abandoned
- Radio
- Wax Museum
- Bogrot
- Beanie's Fast Food
- 99 Messages
- Death Follows
- After Closing
- Growth
- Quarantine
- The Cleaners
- Experimental
- In the Space Above the Wardrobe
MY REVIEW:
This is a great little collection. These are bite-sized stories, perfect for train rides, lunch breaks, or just when you want to take a quickie and have a little bit of spooky in your day. Each story is short and sweet but packs enough punch to be satisfying. My favorite thing about this collection is how open-ended most of these tales are. I know a lot of people don't like open-ended stories, but I love them. I usually feel like the best horror stories have open-endings, and Coates does a great job leaving a lingering taste in your mouth with these tiny tales.
Typically when I review short story collections, I give short reviews of every story in the collection, but since this is such a long collection, I'm going to pick my favorite stories and give you my thoughts on them to keep this review as concise as possible. It was difficult to narrow it down to just a few! These are in not in an order of favorites, just in the order in which they appear in the collection.
"Sixth Floor"
Jack wants to protect his girlfriend by confronting the jerk who's been scaring her at night, but he's the one who gets the scare.
-- This story actually gave me goosebumps. It plays on one of my biggest fears, and Coates writes the ending so well.
"Magpie Girl"
Henry swore he'd do everything in his power to help his community until he met the Magpie Girl and heard her outrageous story of the supernatural. Now, he's paying for it.
-- We all know how much I love a good supernatural/ghost story, and this one is especially well done. It's got every element one could want: magic, revenge, guilt, and a haunting all rolled into one tightly packed tale.
"Red Oak House"
March investigates the long-abandoned and believed to be haunted Red Oak House for his book and makes a harrowing discovery.
-- I love stories about haunted houses, particularly houses that seem to have sentience. This story has a nice twist, and just like the others in this collection, it's jam packed in a short space making it even more spooky-sweet.
"Witch's Book"
A set of twins discover their macabre family history, but it's even worse than it seems on the surface.
-- Oooh, this story is great! When we think of twins, we imagine that bond to be the most unbreakable of all, but this story throws that on its head, and I love it.
"Underhouse"
Xavier enters the crawlspace beneath his house to run some cables for his mom and encounters something -- or someone -- spooky.
-- This might be my favorite story in the collection. It leaves a lot of open questions, a lot of "hows?" but I love that. It's downright horrifying and a little bit sad. It's the perfect kind of horror, I think. The human kind.
"Radio"
Luke, driving too quickly along a mountain pass, stumbles on a strange radio station with catastrophic results.
-- This story feels very NoSleep to me, and we all know how much I love NoSleep. It's surreal and creepy and just fun.
"Death Follows"
John, a medium, gets a visit from Death, himself, and makes a fatal decision to try and save himself.
-- I liked this story because I wished I had thought of it myself. I really like the concept. I'm not sure that the ending would actually work, but I still really, really like the concept.
So, if you're in the mood for some micro-sized, creep-tastic tales, pick up this collection. It's a lot of fun and definitely worth the read.
'Small Horrors: A Collections of Fifty Creepy Stories' by Darcy Coates
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5
Finished on April 1, 2017
Read with Kindle Unlimited
FREE on Kindle Unlimited | $3.99 on Kindle | $16.99 in Paperback
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Something mimics human voices as it lures you into the woods.
One of the morgue's corpses is missing.
Your friend wants to meet late at night, but they're not acting like themselves.
Immerse yourself in the macabre, the gothic, and the chilling with this collection of fifty short stories.
This collection includes the stories:
- The Dog's Grave Digger
- Knocker
- Sixth Floor
- The Sightless
- Flotsam
- Great Aunt Enid
- Red Morning
- Footsteps in the Night
- Surf
- Those Who Live in the Woods
- Music Box
- Ghost Town
- Magpie Girl
- Hazard Lights
- The Resident
- Host
- Snowbound
- Red Oak House
- Overheard
- An Empty Church
- The Monster and the Moors
- Angel of Mercy
- Tune
- Room for Rent
- Snow Hunting
- Witch's Book
- The Woman in the Morgue
- Undeparted
- Doll
- Left Behind
- Underhouse
- Toxic
- The Last Bus
- House for Sale
- Diagen
- Bunker
- Skin House
- Abandoned
- Radio
- Wax Museum
- Bogrot
- Beanie's Fast Food
- 99 Messages
- Death Follows
- After Closing
- Growth
- Quarantine
- The Cleaners
- Experimental
- In the Space Above the Wardrobe
MY REVIEW:
This is a great little collection. These are bite-sized stories, perfect for train rides, lunch breaks, or just when you want to take a quickie and have a little bit of spooky in your day. Each story is short and sweet but packs enough punch to be satisfying. My favorite thing about this collection is how open-ended most of these tales are. I know a lot of people don't like open-ended stories, but I love them. I usually feel like the best horror stories have open-endings, and Coates does a great job leaving a lingering taste in your mouth with these tiny tales.
Typically when I review short story collections, I give short reviews of every story in the collection, but since this is such a long collection, I'm going to pick my favorite stories and give you my thoughts on them to keep this review as concise as possible. It was difficult to narrow it down to just a few! These are in not in an order of favorites, just in the order in which they appear in the collection.
"Sixth Floor"
Jack wants to protect his girlfriend by confronting the jerk who's been scaring her at night, but he's the one who gets the scare.
-- This story actually gave me goosebumps. It plays on one of my biggest fears, and Coates writes the ending so well.
"Magpie Girl"
Henry swore he'd do everything in his power to help his community until he met the Magpie Girl and heard her outrageous story of the supernatural. Now, he's paying for it.
-- We all know how much I love a good supernatural/ghost story, and this one is especially well done. It's got every element one could want: magic, revenge, guilt, and a haunting all rolled into one tightly packed tale.
"Red Oak House"
March investigates the long-abandoned and believed to be haunted Red Oak House for his book and makes a harrowing discovery.
-- I love stories about haunted houses, particularly houses that seem to have sentience. This story has a nice twist, and just like the others in this collection, it's jam packed in a short space making it even more spooky-sweet.
"Witch's Book"
A set of twins discover their macabre family history, but it's even worse than it seems on the surface.
-- Oooh, this story is great! When we think of twins, we imagine that bond to be the most unbreakable of all, but this story throws that on its head, and I love it.
"Underhouse"
Xavier enters the crawlspace beneath his house to run some cables for his mom and encounters something -- or someone -- spooky.
-- This might be my favorite story in the collection. It leaves a lot of open questions, a lot of "hows?" but I love that. It's downright horrifying and a little bit sad. It's the perfect kind of horror, I think. The human kind.
"Radio"
Luke, driving too quickly along a mountain pass, stumbles on a strange radio station with catastrophic results.
-- This story feels very NoSleep to me, and we all know how much I love NoSleep. It's surreal and creepy and just fun.
"Death Follows"
John, a medium, gets a visit from Death, himself, and makes a fatal decision to try and save himself.
-- I liked this story because I wished I had thought of it myself. I really like the concept. I'm not sure that the ending would actually work, but I still really, really like the concept.
So, if you're in the mood for some micro-sized, creep-tastic tales, pick up this collection. It's a lot of fun and definitely worth the read.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
I love Darcy Coates’s short stories! These were really fun and creepy and I’m so sad I’ve finished them all. One thing I will say is that some of the stories had a pretty similar kind of ending, but overall I really enjoyed these stories. Some of the creepiest were “Underhouse”, “The Resident”, and “Beanie’s Fast Food”.
dark
fast-paced
I really enjoyed these small, delicious little horrors. My only grievance is that they were a little too short and not entirely compatible with my scattered attention. I solved that by just listening to a few stories at a time.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Still unsure if I'm a short stories kinda person, or whether the collections I'm reading are simply mediocre. A lot of these felt like they would've scared me as a kid, but even then I was one of those brats who was fortunate enough to find a copy of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark in my school library, and after seeing those horrifying illustrations at such a young age I'm not sure even little me would've found this collection particularly fear-inducing.
I like Darcy Coates as an author, I think she's very good with atmosphere. But in the constrained format of a short story? Definitely not part of her skill set.
I like Darcy Coates as an author, I think she's very good with atmosphere. But in the constrained format of a short story? Definitely not part of her skill set.
These stories were so short that I didn’t feel invested in any of them and they were generic and forgettable. I did really enjoy two of them though-Angel of Mercy and Room for Rent.
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I love Darcy Coates books, but this collection of stories were just mid. They all started to blend together after a while and they were missing the cozy vibes of her full length books. I didn’t like this book enough to keep it in my collection so it got donated. I still love Darcy Coates though! This one was just a miss.
A great collection of scary stories. I did not enjoy these as much as her novels, but they are short and extremely creepy.