whimsydearest

The Trees Grew Because I Bled There by Eric LaRocca is a collection that meditates on grief, estranged relationships, and the pain of watching your loved ones slowly age and die. The stories here unflinchingly explore the darkest part of the human psyche during the most difficult trials of a person’s life. Perhaps due to their length, unfortunately some of the short stories fell flat to me compared to Larocca’s longer works like We Can Never Leave This Place or They Were Here Before Us. The first story especially felt incomplete to me because I lacked enough history between the father and the kid for the ending to pack an emotional punch. However, these are the standouts of the collection for me.  - Bodies Are for Burning. An aunt struggles with her compulsion to set things on fire as she cares for her young niece. This is an unnerving and poignant look at a lesser-talked about aspect of OCD: dealing with intrusive thoughts. - The Strange Thing We Become. Told through an internet ...

I got my first taste of the weirdness that is Aliya Whiteley when I read  Skyward Inn,  and I fell in love with her storytelling then. Her latest short story collection,  From the Neck Up and Other Stories,  doesn’t disappoint in the weird department either. This collection is a trip into the uncanny and the bizarre through speculative fiction. The stories range from anything from a talking severed head to a city that continuously grows—all of them filled with an underlying strangeness that is utterly captivating. However, my personal favorites are as follows: “Many-Eyed Monsters.” An oddball dark comedy about a woman who keeps coughing up little many-eyed creatures and she must wrestle with her growing attachment to them. “Into Glass.” An introspective story about a woman who has inherited a strange ability from her family. She secretly removes pieces of her husband in order to turn them into glass sculptures at night. However, she begins to questions the effects th...

Let Me Out I've Had Enough  by Mark Matthews presents a collection of short stories revolving around death, despair, and people who are at the end of their rope. It’s a raw and visceral exploration of the human psyche during people’s darkest hours—written by a licensed professional counselor. Needless to say, this is one heavy read. The stories vary in subject and genre, but they are all filled with the same underlying theme of sadness and desperation. On one hand, there’s by far the most bizarre and experimental of the bunch: “Body of Christ.” This story centers around both a girl coping with the death of her mother and a boy who's coping with the death of his father in … unusual ways. This particular story teeters between grotesque and comically absurd at times, but its horrifying conclusion redeemed the story for me and made my skin crawl. There are two standouts in this collection for me though. First is “The Last Bug Chaser.” The story follows an alien who may be the last ...