A review by tightropetothesun
Everything That's Underneath by Kristi DeMeester

3.0

This collection of short stories was creepy, unsettling, and poetic -- which I'm sure is what the author set out to accomplish. The stories were very dream-like, and it was often difficult to understand if something supernatural was happening or if it was simply happening in the characters heads. I think that on the whole, the ambiguity connected the stories and set the tone for the collection. It definitely left me feeling like something was off and that I didn't fully understand what was going on (what many of the characters must have been feeling as well), which pulled me deeply into each story.

I was able to read this very quickly because of the incredibly short lengths of most of the stories. This made for good pacing even when I only had a few minutes to sit down and read.

I had the same problems with this one as with the majority of short story collections that I have read-- namely that the stories feel unfinished and unable to stand alone if they weren't a part of this particular collection. I wanted many of them to be more fleshed out and involved. BUT, as I said, this is how I feel about most short story collections, so take it with a grain of salt. Just because a specific type of story doesn't work for me, doesn't mean you wont love it.

Overall, this was very well written literary horror. 3 stars