Book Review: The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls by Angela Sylvaine

“Death changes a person’s song.”

📚

The Dead Spot is utter perfection from start to finish. Every single devastating, heart-wrenching, eerie, terrifying, vicious, vengeful, shocking, twisted story is a chilling, thrilling, horrific, and exhilarating experience where women and girls face formidable foes and situations. And while they’re certainly victims, these fully-fleshed characters also possess inner fire and agency. Their courage and strength screams off the pages as they endure unspeakable circumstances and fight back against evil oppressors, at times tragically succumbing, at others pointedly enacting targeted, brutal, and cinematic vengeance. And the scariest part? The intense realism and hair-thin line between comfort and ruin, success and failure, fiction and reality.

The entire compilation is malevolent and pristine, generating the rare occasion where this reader couldn’t choose just a few stories to highlight. Each contains so much depth, skill, and feeling; hope occasionally shimmers among the doom and dread, and this, along with skillfully cultivated horror and desolation, makes this collection an absolute treasure and delight. And that cover — utterly gorgeous!

• Astronaut Dreams: A tragic and anxiety-inducing apocalyptic narrative where a man-made epidemic wreaks lethal havoc.

• The Bride: A deliciously dark Gothic tale surrounding an old Victorian wedding dress and two young brides.

• New Hue: A savage and phenomenal dystopian where color determines caste; appalling and unmooring in its brutality and real-life societal parallels (and that ending!!😫).

• Playing Tricks: A creepy exploration of insanity and manipulation that cuts to the bone.

• Sorry, We’re Open: A nightmarish journey of love and longing with a seriously haunting conclusion.

• Antifreeze and Sweet Peas: A powerful and original account of murder, toxic masculinity, and sugary-sweet revenge.

• If Heard, Please Call: A living nightmare where loss, carnage, and devotion creep, haunt, and devastate in equal measure.

• Starved: An all-consuming portrayal of attachment, pleasure, deprivation, and obsession oozing with beauty and horror.

• Return of the Wilderness Girls: A mysterious and violent story of time, transformation, truth, and hatred centered around the quandaries of villainy, humanity, and monsters.

• Night Maere: A paralyzing tale of fear, foreboding, and predisposition where demons lurk within and stalk without.

• The Dead Spot: A disturbing titular title of control, choice, tragedy, and fate.

• Burnt Embers and Bluebirds: A strange and monstrous anecdote of sorrow, loneliness, and belonging where a library functions as both home and haven.

• Mr. Chew: A harrowing examination of power, neglect, trauma, mistreatment, and corruption where help is scarce and potentially deadly.

• Crimson Clover: One of the most concise yet hardest hitting and brutally biting stories in the bunch!

• Unrestful Dogs: A claustrophobic tale of deceit that truly unnerves and terrifies.

• Clutching Air: A brilliant and commanding allegory of gentrification, social inequity, predators, and society’s callous and greedy nature.

• Edge of Decay: An evocative and agonizing story of abuse, cruelty, and comeuppance that serves as a thundering final exclamation point!

A huge thank you to Angela Sylvaine for sharing an ARC of this tremendous collection, which is scheduled for release on May 21st via Dark Matter INK. I ravenously devoured it, and it will easily top both my yearly and all-time favorites lists!

❤Amanda