Sadly, I was disappointed in the latter, but at least it was over quickly.
The first story should've been my clue that this was not going to be horrific at all, but it was going to be nauseating in more ways than one. When the first story in a horror collection is titled, "The Birthing Tub," you prepare yourself for terror. What I got was a whole lot of queasiness. I won't ruin it for you in case you happen to like those things, but what was born was not a baby, and what was floating in the tub was not afterbirth. Despite this disgusting opening story, I journeyed on, hopeful that things would get better.
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| The fluid in The Birthing Tub wasn't blood. Blood would've been better. |
I will not recount every single story in the collection here, as there are nine, but I will hit some highlights. I really did like the story "The Deep End." I found it intriguing and liked the reference to the Morgens, a siren like character I had never heard of before. I also liked that the ending was left up to the imagination of the reader. The title story was also interesting. "Amaranthine" is a very short story where the main character is a book binder who specializes in materials other than leather or paper. In a way, it reminded me of The Others, one of my favorite movies, as a look back at one of the more morose, yet intriguing, mementoes of the past. However, unlike the haunting movie staring Nichole Kidman, this story doesn't quite linger the same way and you certainly can't relate to the characters in the same way.
There are some grammatical mistakes/typos, and some of them were quite distracting. There were not a lot of them, but the fact that they made it difficult to process what was happening brought me out of the book and left me confused. Those are the worst kinds of mistakes, in my opinion, and I'm not sure how they were missed as this book appears to have a publisher other than the author, though no editor is listed.
As I mentioned, this book is really short at 63 pages. I certainly wouldn't pay the asking $2.99 for it at that length, particularly now that I know that it isn't scary. I happened to pick it up during a free promotion. If you'd like to find out for yourself, you can find it here. You can also find my slightly different three star Amazon review here, and if you found either of these reviews helpful, please vote "Yes" on Amazon.
My next review will be back to contemporary romance. I think this one may have turned me off of "horror" for a while....
