Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes

A slick collection of variably disturbing short stories that will consume a few hours of your time without you noticing.

1. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a gruesome epistolary story connecting two women through email and text message where their quickly dread-inducing kink relationship becomes a nausea-inducing horror-show on the desperation people have to love and be loved. Truly disgusting and I could never bring myself to read it again, but it was the best story in the collection.

2. The Enchantment follows an estranged couple as they act as caretakers for an island hotel the winter after their son’s suicide. Heavy religious themes might resonate more with other readers, but they didn’t with me. The beats in this one read more like the author wanted very much for this to be a screenplay and not a short story. It felt a little like other familiar stories in the horror canon put into a blender? My least favourite of the bunch.

3. It’s Like This All Over was mildly interesting. A man finds something strange in his yard and politely confronts his aloof neighbour about it, and then finds himself unable to refuse the neighbour’s invitations. The way the author presented the protagonist’s perspective seemed to have the opposite effect as was intended. By the end I got the sense we were supposed to very much view him as an insert that any of us could very well be, but there was a strange depersonalizations of him that made it difficult. Perhaps it was that he never has a first name, and is only “Mr. (Surname)”, which in my mind has a way of othering someone. I also would have liked to spend more time with the protagonist actually engaging with the neighbour, the escalation seemed far too sudden.

Overall an enjoyable collection of disturbing tales, and quick to read in a single dark evening alone.

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parasolcrafter's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

the first story out of these three was fine, but the other two were quite boring :/ reading the afterword did make them both a bit clearer, but it doesnt make the stories any more enjoyable. the first one was really well-written and i wanted to know how it would end, but the second story was a little too drawn out, and the third one was just...strange. i also dont know why the third story's main characters husband was described as being racist because he's literally only mentioned. it just feels like a really weird detail about someone we dont ever meet.

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