A review by jayneyh314
Afraid of the Light by S.R. Masters, Heather Critchlow, Rachel Blok, Phoebe Morgan, Claire Empton, Niki Mackay, James Delargy, Kate Simants, N.J. Mackay, Adam Southward, Jo Furniss, Victoria Selman, Robert Scragg, Elle Croft, Alex North, Dominic Nolan

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

“Afraid of the Light” is a collection of 14 short stories from leading crime fiction authors with all profits being donated to charity. 

I find short stories a bit hit and miss usually if I’m honest. I don’t mind novellas so much as there is more time to get engrossed but sometimes short stories just feel too short and I don’t care enough about the characters. “Afraid of the Light”, however, is a very good collection and makes the most of the short story format. 

It is a slightly odd collection as I felt like the first couple of stories were more supernatural type stories than they were crime fiction but they still worked as short stories and the rest of the collection was more traditional crime fiction. 

Even in a short story format I’m drawn to a twist so one of my particular favourites was “Sheep’s Clothing”. I absolutely loved that one. I was also quite fond of “Sausage Fingers” and “Planting Nan”. There’s some great little characters that have been created for these stories and I’d love to see some of the ideas fleshed out into a longer format but some of them, “Sheep’s Clothing” included, definitely work best in the short story format. 

I’m so glad my friend recommended this collection to me as it has been perfect for me right now. I’ve had a cold and also been doing some revision during my lunch hour at work and by the end of the day my brain power and capacity have definitely reduced and it’s been so nice to not have to focus on lots of details or remember character interactions from one day to the next. 

Every story was well written. I’ve mentioned there were some I preferred to others but that’s more to do with the plot of those stories rather than anything wrong with the writing on any of the others. Reading this collection has also made me want to find out more about some of these authors and look into reading some of their other work because if they can achieve work like this within limited page numbers I’m excited to see what they can do with a full length book.