Book two in the fifty.fifty.me challenge.

This is a collection of horror short stories, so I can’t very well write a blurb.

They are, however, entertaining. Some more than others. 

The book is divided into three sections: Evil, Darkness and Beasts. Each story is no more than 20 or so pages, some shorter.

While some I didn’t care for, my absolute favorite was “The Legend of Anna Barton” by Laurie Faria Stolarz. It’s young, hip and told in first-person—my favorite POV.

My first book for the fifty.fifty.me challenge and I fall someplace in the middle of great and eh.

Blurb:

Frances can forgive. She can even forget. But she can never escape her past …

A compelling psychological thriller from the acclaimed author of Teach Me. Frances Robinson has the perfect life: loving adoptive parents, a great best friend, and a cute new boyfriend. But Frances has a secret.

Once upon a time she wasn’t Frances Robinson. She was Shine, and she lived with her three sisters and her birth mother, Afton Jelks, far out in the country. But the loneliness overtook Afton’s fragile mind, and one day she smothered her daughters, one after another. Only Frances escaped.

Now Afton is out of prison. And she wants to finish what she started… .

My Impression:

The book is very well written, and I was completely intrigued by the premise. I read some of the reviews on Amazon, so there was some information pertaining to the ending that I knew going into this. It didn’t deter me. In fact, it’s what kept me going, although others didn’t care for it.

At page 167, I put the book down for nearly a month. I was bored. It was interesting but didn’t compel me to finish. You know those books that you can’t get out of your head no matter what? I’m reading one of those now. This one wasn’t like that. I forced myself to finish. It’s not a bad book by any means. As I said, it’s very well written. I guess I just didn’t fully connect.

My biggest problem is that while the prose was lovely, I kept getting thrown out of the book by Frances’ voice. She sounded older than her age at times. I just kept thinking, this doesn’t sound like a teenage girl.

And while the ending probably would’ve come from left field had I not known, I didn’t think it was as horrendous as others did. 

There’s a commercial for that stupid new show on ABC, The Revolution, that plays the music of P!nk’s “Fucking Perfect”. 

Um, the show’s about changing yourself—being made over because, you know, all women need a team of experts to tell them how to live. Because we’re stupid and weak and emotional and fat and diet obsessed. Didn’t ya know?

Yeah, get the irony?

I’m going to go vomit now.