Melody Writes

Original review written Oct. 25, 2014 on Goodreads Original review (with updated comments) I picked up this little anthology at ConBravo this past summer as a way to support several authors and get a taste of their writing without breaking my bank account. As the title, "Spirits of Suburbia" suggests, the stories deal with fantasy in an urban setting and how that affects the characters. Some gain a new understanding of the world, while find an unlikely answer to some of their own problems. My favourite story in the book is "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" by Tecuma Macintyre. A young lady invites her witch friend to cleanse her bookstore of evil spirits. The author does an excellent job of teasing out the back story of both these women in a way that intrigues the reader, but still feels like a complete tale. When Abby, the witch, is going through the cleansing ritual, I was actually a little scared. There is a lot of depth to this world, and I would be int

Original Review Published: July 26, 2016 on Goodreads . As the title reveals, the stories in this volume are meant to be chilling. Several of them are horror tales, such as "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" and the eponymous "Poison Eaters", but others are more about "strange happenings" like "Paper Cuts Scissors" which is about a library where characters from novels come to life and intermingle. That one was probably my favourite because what long time reader doesn't wonder about meeting beloved fictional characters? On a less positive note, I feel like the stories could have been arranged better and a few of them cut from the book. For instance, "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "A Reversal of Fortune" have a different tone than the other stories. The Wolf one is short and painfully predictable in its tiny plot. The one about fortune I think is trying to be humorous as it scares and that doesn't really work for me. Scattered

Original Review written in September 2016 on Goodreads . The Review: It sounds like a simple wish - to be remembered when you die. That is Shari Cooper's wish, but when she falls to her death from a balcony at the age of 18, she didn't have a chance to make her mark. Remember Me is the story of Shari's quest to find her murderer and make some sort of posthumous mark on the world. This, like Until the End, is one of Christopher Pike's trilogies republished as one omnibus. Also like Until the End, it might have been better as one book. The first of the three - also called Remember Me - is the best part. It's a simple teen murder mystery with a supernatural element. The tension is solid and I enjoyed figuring out who might have killed Shari. I had read this book years ago, but had forgotten who the killer was. What I also enjoyed about the story was its emotion. Sometimes Pike got a little silly when Shari was looking into people's dreams, but there we

Review originally written in 2015 on Goodreads .   The Review: Before Stephen King eclipsed all other authors in my heart, there was another. One I think of as my "pre-Stephen-King" and that was Christopher Pike. I devoured all of his books I could get a hold of in high school. The other big horror writer of the day was R. L. Stine and I don't remember what it was that I preferred in Christopher Pike. I think I liked how some of his stories were less "evil dead cheerleader" and more "bizarro sci-fi murder mystery". With time travel. And lizard people evolving into humans. Recently, I've noticed Pike's been making something of a comeback, so I thought it might be interesting to revisit some of the YA out when I was a teen (dating myself I know). I began this trip with one of Pike's most popular series, the Final Friends trilogy, now republished as one book, Until the End . I should note that this isn't my first return to Pike

Title: Nothing But the Willows Author: J. D. Buffington   This is my second time reading and reviewing J. D. Buffington's work. Previously, I read and enjoyed his take on the Medusa myth: Come Hither, No Malice ( Review here ). So, when he was looking for people to review his short story collection, I happily volunteered, and was not disappointed. Buffington's stories are unique and varied. Many are told in first person narrative, but he also experiments with screenplay format and second-person. I would classify the stories generally under horror, but many have strong elements of sci-fi, fantasy, drama, and inspire more emotions than fear. Buffington's author bio states, "He seamlessly weaves vivid nightmares and haunting anxiety together to immerse readers into a state of fright and wonder," and I believe that this collection demonstrates that. The best stories in the collection offer up a sense of wonder along with the fears. A few of my favourites that best

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Title: Glass Stories Author: Ivy Grimes When white light is passed through a glass prism, it refracts into a rainbow of colours. Similarly, the seventeen tales in Ivy Grimes’ Glass Stories are all bound together by the common theme of “glass”, but each one is a unique shade. Glass objects are at the heart of each story and range from a tiny glass pill to a glass mountain. The importance of each glass item shifts from story to story, but there is always some glass present, and I enjoyed guessing what form the glass would take in each story. Grimes has an unusual style, and her stories do not follow typical conventions or tropes. The tales were often experimental, or as the description promises, “darkly weird” and “absurd”. Experimental does not always work for me, as I tend to enjoy tropes, but I appreciate new styles and books outside the norm, too. Some of the stories worked better for me than others. A few felt as though they ended rather abruptly, but even the ones that agreed with