A review by josephvanburen
Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked by Christa Carmen

4.0

I first read Christa Carmen's story "Red Room" in Unnerving magazine and loved it. This collection was every bit as good as I expected. She does a great job of taking old school horror tropes & even older school gothic conventions, placing them in scary modern settings, then subverting half of them and embracing the rest. The tales that result are refreshing takes on the influences they are rooted in and give nods to. Addiction is a big theme in this book, which is a horror close to my heart. I also really liked the sense of a shared universe with some characters appearing, or at least being mentioned in, more than one story. If you like mess-with-your-head horror that is just as poetic as it is disturbing, read this book.