A review by annreadsabook
Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror by Jordan Peele, John Joseph Adams

challenging dark tense medium-paced

4.5

If you were a 90s kid and loved/were forever traumatized by that book SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK and are looking for something similar this season, let me tell you this is one of those books. It’s jam-packed with stories from powerhouse Black writers such as Tananarive Due, Nnedi Okorafor, P Djéli Clark, N.K. Jemisin, and many more. These are stories that examine what it means to be scared in our world—it pushes the boundaries of Black folks’ realities and nightmares (because sometimes our reality can be the stuff of nightmares).

While I enjoyed all of these stories, some stand-outs to me were those by Tananarive Due, Tochi Onyebuchi, Terence Taylor, and Nnedi Okorafor. I love how each of these stories take reality and morph it into something a bit more unrecognizable and all the more unsettling. This book is a series of funhouse mirrors distorting the already warped world that Black folks occupy—you probably won’t like (or forget) what you see. There’s all-seeing cars, mysterious hitchhikers, dark entities that hound people late into the night, and much more. But that’s all I’m about to say! No spoilers here!

Y’all are gonna definitely want to get your hands on this! Your October scary story reading will not be complete without it.

Thank you so much to Random House for the gifted ARC!!!
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