Scan barcode
A review by sucreslibrary
Night Shade: Gothic Tales by Women by Judith M. Redding
3.0
a super mixed bag of stories but there were a few standouts that make me feel comfortable giving it 3 stars overall. I'm not sure I'd recommend this collection to people who truly want a gothic time, as many stories didn't feel "gothic" in any way. I was also surprised by just how much animals played a part - by my count, out of 17 stories, 6 of them had to do with animals and shapeshifting into animals in some way, with a 7th having to do with freeing animals.
the stories I liked were "Creepers" by Joanna Dahme (this one did feel very gothic - little ghost girls and spooky ivy taking over a home), "Aperitif" by Susan Raffo (this one got points for being just flat-out weird, though it isn't gothic at all. the author's note at the end was cute), "Silkie" by Barbara Wilson (lesbian selkie love story!), and "Vengeance of Epona" by Susanna Sturgis (having a fat MC in a 90s story collection who likes being fat and calls out other people for being shitty about it was really surprising and cool to see. this one is also sapphic but not super gothic).
the truly terrible ones were "Femme Coverte" by Diane DeKalb-Rittenhouse (white woman becomes empowered to take ownership of her family's plantation and is totally a "good" slave owner and feels super bad she can't let all of them go :( this one also ended in some of the cringiest romance dialogue I've seen in a while and nearly caused me to drop the collection as it was the second story and made me worry about what else was coming) and "Feeding the Dark" by Jean Stewart (lesbian cop that comes under the spell of a goddess and has a lot of awful cop thoughts while internally debating on the nature of justice).
the amount of lesbian stories in this was really refreshing, and having a story focused on a mother that lost her son to police brutality and her learning how to cope with that was interesting (I do feel like this one fit as a "gothic" story). there were several authors of color included as well. as mentioned above, getting a story with a fat protagonist that isn't focused on her losing weight was a nice surprise and I enjoyed that one quite a bit. I've had this book sitting around forever so I'm glad to have finally read it!
the stories I liked were "Creepers" by Joanna Dahme (this one did feel very gothic - little ghost girls and spooky ivy taking over a home), "Aperitif" by Susan Raffo (this one got points for being just flat-out weird, though it isn't gothic at all. the author's note at the end was cute), "Silkie" by Barbara Wilson (lesbian selkie love story!), and "Vengeance of Epona" by Susanna Sturgis (having a fat MC in a 90s story collection who likes being fat and calls out other people for being shitty about it was really surprising and cool to see. this one is also sapphic but not super gothic).
the truly terrible ones were "Femme Coverte" by Diane DeKalb-Rittenhouse (white woman becomes empowered to take ownership of her family's plantation and is totally a "good" slave owner and feels super bad she can't let all of them go :( this one also ended in some of the cringiest romance dialogue I've seen in a while and nearly caused me to drop the collection as it was the second story and made me worry about what else was coming) and "Feeding the Dark" by Jean Stewart (lesbian cop that comes under the spell of a goddess and has a lot of awful cop thoughts while internally debating on the nature of justice).
the amount of lesbian stories in this was really refreshing, and having a story focused on a mother that lost her son to police brutality and her learning how to cope with that was interesting (I do feel like this one fit as a "gothic" story). there were several authors of color included as well. as mentioned above, getting a story with a fat protagonist that isn't focused on her losing weight was a nice surprise and I enjoyed that one quite a bit. I've had this book sitting around forever so I'm glad to have finally read it!