What do you think?
Rate this book
Hellions: Stories
From celebrated author Julia Elliott, Hellions is a genre-bending collection of stories that ranges like a feral dog from medieval Europe to the heart of the contemporary South and on into strange, tech-mediated futures.
From the acclaimed author of The Wilds comes an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal.
In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods. With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, presenting earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.
From the acclaimed author of The Wilds comes an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal.
In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods. With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, presenting earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.
253 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 15, 2025
About the author
Julia Elliott
3 books1 followerJulia Elliott is the author of the story collection Hellions, winner of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and a Southern Book Prize finalist. Her collection The Wilds, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, was chosen by Kirkus, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, and Electric Literature as one of the Best Books of 2014. She also published the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, Reactor, Granta, and The New York Times. She has won a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award and two Pushcart Prizes, and her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories. She teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina and lives in Columbia with her husband, daughter, and six hens.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 177 reviews
April 15, 2025
When I was seven years old, my parents moved us across the San Francisco Bay from one suburb to another, both bathed in the omnipresent shadow of the burgeoning influence of Silicon Valley. For one glorious year, we lived on a street surrounded by families in neighbouring houses stuffed to the gills with kids around my age. For one glorious summer, I spent every hour that the California sun was awake and often several hours after it went to sleep immersed in the sort of rapture that comes with being a kid surrounded by other kids that had all been jettisoned from their homes for the day and told to “get some fresh air”.
I climbed my first tree that summer, a stately walnut tree that graced the edge of the property, and subsequently had my first fall from that same tree, requiring a handful of stitches and gifting me a little notch of a scar that I can still find on my face if I look close enough. That was the summer that I learned my first swear words from a kid that was two years older than me and then learned what happens when you exclaim, “SHIT!” in front of your aunt and uncle soon after. I rode a black BMX bike hampered with training wheels up and down the street to the various homes of friends and ended up being chased by a gang of high school kids on their own bikes as they screamed, “we’ll get you next time!” after taking flight down the length of our street, panicking and leaping off of my bike to vault over the white wooden fence that lined our front yard.
No matter how long ago that was, I can still feel that alternating sense of burning fear and cold sweat as I sensed them on my heels, chasing me up the street. I can still feel the relief that I experienced when I barrelled through the front door to my house and heard my mom’s voice as she talked to a friend on the phone. I can still feel the tang of the chlorine in my nostrils from the pool that we had in the backyard as I walked through the house and launched myself straight into the pool, still wearing all of my clothes, letting the cool water strip away the stress, the sweat, the heat. But the feeling of panic, the thrill of the fear, i can still feel those prodding at a part of my brain that will never disappear and will never die.
As I read through the eleven stories that make up Julia Elliott’s new collection, Hellions, I felt that surge of memory, that flicker of nostalgia, that pinprick of dread come swarming back into my blood and felt myself looking over my shoulder to see if I was yet again being chased by that small army of boys on their bikes. It’s not enough to say that you had the chance to read one of Julia’s stories, that word - “read” - it doesn’t do enough to define what your mind and your body go through as you take each of her stories in. Her ability to pull you into a scene with just a few sentences and introduce you to a new cast of characters all with fresh perspectives amidst unfamiliar surroundings and allow you to feel as if you’ve lived with these characters and their experiences for a good chunk of your life is masterful. I hesitate to say that you experience her stories rather than read them because even that doesn’t feel like enough. You inhale, you start the first line and then you don’t exhale until the final period marks the end of the story. You live it, it sustains you.
It’s extremely fitting that when you pick up a copy of Hellions, it’s cover is graced with quotes from two legends - Carmen Maria Machado and Jeff VanderMeer - extolling the pleasures of the stories contained within its pages. Both writers are well-known for their deft ability to pull you deep into the chaos of their own stories and surround you with an abundance of imagery that pushes your imagination and fascination to the limits. Hellions is deliciously lush in it’s own right with intense, biting and snarling descriptions of the sweat and sting of the sweet and rotten summer air, the sludge at the banks of ponds and the chittering of insects and the stink of bogs and swamps, the ache of love, of loss, of needing more. Julia clearly delights in playing with language and all of it’s mighty potential and gives a voice to a way of looking at things that usually only nags at the corners of most people’s minds, unable to find purchase and lost to time.
Throughout Hellions, childhood and all of it’s blissful wonder and naughty escapism run rampant. Even in the few stories that don’t feature children directly, it’s presence is felt to extreme degrees - both as defiance to the idea of growing up and maturing and as an ode to the sheer capabilities of an imagination allowed to flourish. The characters that traverse through each of the stories seem to transcend time and place despite it being remarkably clear when and where these stories are occurring without even a single breath given to the when or the where. They appear to exist in a liminal space in time where the past, present and future collide and allow for reality to break from it’s strict rules and standards, creating a universe unto itself.
If anything, Hellions feels like a flex of the range and abilities of it’s author, both in it’s playfulness with genre-hopping and in the way that similar elements inhabit each of the stories, giving them the feeling of being intrinsically diverse and ever-connected in spirit. Split-level houses, the struggle that comes with being forced to grow up, the pain of being virtually ignored by parents that are at constantly at odds with each other, the onslaught of love, the overwhelming presence of nature, mysticism and mythology, the cleansing power of water - all are central to so much of what lies at the heart of Hellions as words and sentences are turned into a living organism that you can almost taste, almost smell and will undoubtedly reach out to and attempt to touch.
We are barely a quarter of the way into 2025 and I have already had the pleasure to read four new collections of short stories that have left me winded, gutted and thrilled for what’s occurring right now in the world of short fiction. Hellions is the first of this batch to be released and it might just be my favourite.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Tin House for allowing me to read an advanced copy of a book that I will be re-reading at least once a year.
I climbed my first tree that summer, a stately walnut tree that graced the edge of the property, and subsequently had my first fall from that same tree, requiring a handful of stitches and gifting me a little notch of a scar that I can still find on my face if I look close enough. That was the summer that I learned my first swear words from a kid that was two years older than me and then learned what happens when you exclaim, “SHIT!” in front of your aunt and uncle soon after. I rode a black BMX bike hampered with training wheels up and down the street to the various homes of friends and ended up being chased by a gang of high school kids on their own bikes as they screamed, “we’ll get you next time!” after taking flight down the length of our street, panicking and leaping off of my bike to vault over the white wooden fence that lined our front yard.
No matter how long ago that was, I can still feel that alternating sense of burning fear and cold sweat as I sensed them on my heels, chasing me up the street. I can still feel the relief that I experienced when I barrelled through the front door to my house and heard my mom’s voice as she talked to a friend on the phone. I can still feel the tang of the chlorine in my nostrils from the pool that we had in the backyard as I walked through the house and launched myself straight into the pool, still wearing all of my clothes, letting the cool water strip away the stress, the sweat, the heat. But the feeling of panic, the thrill of the fear, i can still feel those prodding at a part of my brain that will never disappear and will never die.
As I read through the eleven stories that make up Julia Elliott’s new collection, Hellions, I felt that surge of memory, that flicker of nostalgia, that pinprick of dread come swarming back into my blood and felt myself looking over my shoulder to see if I was yet again being chased by that small army of boys on their bikes. It’s not enough to say that you had the chance to read one of Julia’s stories, that word - “read” - it doesn’t do enough to define what your mind and your body go through as you take each of her stories in. Her ability to pull you into a scene with just a few sentences and introduce you to a new cast of characters all with fresh perspectives amidst unfamiliar surroundings and allow you to feel as if you’ve lived with these characters and their experiences for a good chunk of your life is masterful. I hesitate to say that you experience her stories rather than read them because even that doesn’t feel like enough. You inhale, you start the first line and then you don’t exhale until the final period marks the end of the story. You live it, it sustains you.
It’s extremely fitting that when you pick up a copy of Hellions, it’s cover is graced with quotes from two legends - Carmen Maria Machado and Jeff VanderMeer - extolling the pleasures of the stories contained within its pages. Both writers are well-known for their deft ability to pull you deep into the chaos of their own stories and surround you with an abundance of imagery that pushes your imagination and fascination to the limits. Hellions is deliciously lush in it’s own right with intense, biting and snarling descriptions of the sweat and sting of the sweet and rotten summer air, the sludge at the banks of ponds and the chittering of insects and the stink of bogs and swamps, the ache of love, of loss, of needing more. Julia clearly delights in playing with language and all of it’s mighty potential and gives a voice to a way of looking at things that usually only nags at the corners of most people’s minds, unable to find purchase and lost to time.
Throughout Hellions, childhood and all of it’s blissful wonder and naughty escapism run rampant. Even in the few stories that don’t feature children directly, it’s presence is felt to extreme degrees - both as defiance to the idea of growing up and maturing and as an ode to the sheer capabilities of an imagination allowed to flourish. The characters that traverse through each of the stories seem to transcend time and place despite it being remarkably clear when and where these stories are occurring without even a single breath given to the when or the where. They appear to exist in a liminal space in time where the past, present and future collide and allow for reality to break from it’s strict rules and standards, creating a universe unto itself.
If anything, Hellions feels like a flex of the range and abilities of it’s author, both in it’s playfulness with genre-hopping and in the way that similar elements inhabit each of the stories, giving them the feeling of being intrinsically diverse and ever-connected in spirit. Split-level houses, the struggle that comes with being forced to grow up, the pain of being virtually ignored by parents that are at constantly at odds with each other, the onslaught of love, the overwhelming presence of nature, mysticism and mythology, the cleansing power of water - all are central to so much of what lies at the heart of Hellions as words and sentences are turned into a living organism that you can almost taste, almost smell and will undoubtedly reach out to and attempt to touch.
We are barely a quarter of the way into 2025 and I have already had the pleasure to read four new collections of short stories that have left me winded, gutted and thrilled for what’s occurring right now in the world of short fiction. Hellions is the first of this batch to be released and it might just be my favourite.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Tin House for allowing me to read an advanced copy of a book that I will be re-reading at least once a year.
June 3, 2026
When Jeff VanderMeer and Carmen Maria Machado are raving about a book, you KNOW it’s going to be a good read. So I was not surprised that I had such a fantastic time reading this one.
This is a collection of often chilling speculative literary stories, many of them set in the U.S. South. Throughout them, there is a sense of confrontation with the unknown. The standout story for me depicts women who are staying at a retreat for female artists and their children, when suddenly two extra kids appear out of nowhere. There’s this moment when the main character is counting all of the kids, who are wearing masks, and realizes there are strangers among the group. As the story unfurls, there’s palpable tension as we wonder whether these innocent-looking children can be trusted. This feeling of not knowing is pretty much guaranteed to draw me into a story, and the must-read sensation is only heightened by the gorgeous prose.
I’m not from the Southern U.S., but I suspect this collection will resonate extra hard with those who are, as the setting plays such a crucial role in many of these stories.
If you, like me, love books that hit that sweet spot between horror and lit fic, you’ll enjoy this collection!
Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy.
This is a collection of often chilling speculative literary stories, many of them set in the U.S. South. Throughout them, there is a sense of confrontation with the unknown. The standout story for me depicts women who are staying at a retreat for female artists and their children, when suddenly two extra kids appear out of nowhere. There’s this moment when the main character is counting all of the kids, who are wearing masks, and realizes there are strangers among the group. As the story unfurls, there’s palpable tension as we wonder whether these innocent-looking children can be trusted. This feeling of not knowing is pretty much guaranteed to draw me into a story, and the must-read sensation is only heightened by the gorgeous prose.
I’m not from the Southern U.S., but I suspect this collection will resonate extra hard with those who are, as the setting plays such a crucial role in many of these stories.
If you, like me, love books that hit that sweet spot between horror and lit fic, you’ll enjoy this collection!
Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy.
August 26, 2026
Finished it a couple of days ago and still thinking about it! I decided to give this collection of eleven stories a strong 4 stars. The stories are horror, fairy tales, magic realism, and, overall, just plain bizarre and eerie. And, above all, there's Julia Elliott's beautiful prose.
The story that sticks with me the most is "The Mothers." It involves a pair of mysterious orphans who come out of the mountains ( in North Carolina) and seem to exert some kind of influence over the children of women who are at an art colony...There's something about mysterious children...
I had to take breaks from reading the stories, as they were beginning to blur together. I like to read horror now and then but not as my regular reading. I feel this book has given me enough horror to last me for awhile but I have to admit these stories are more eerie and surreal than horror ( horrorific?).
The story that sticks with me the most is "The Mothers." It involves a pair of mysterious orphans who come out of the mountains ( in North Carolina) and seem to exert some kind of influence over the children of women who are at an art colony...There's something about mysterious children...
I had to take breaks from reading the stories, as they were beginning to blur together. I like to read horror now and then but not as my regular reading. I feel this book has given me enough horror to last me for awhile but I have to admit these stories are more eerie and surreal than horror ( horrorific?).
Read
June 5, 2026Lush prose weaves stories of witches and feral girls. For me, the standout stories in this collection were "The Maiden" and "Flying". I'm keen to read more from Elliot and, happily, have already tracked down a secondhand copy of The Wilds, which appears to be difficult to find.
February 2, 2026
I enjoyed Elliott's debut collection The Wilds, but on the whole I didn't find her second one to be as enthralling. It features less cultural critique and social satire, which were elements of the first collection I particularly enjoyed. She is still mixing these into her supernatural Southern Gothic style, but in most stories they're less prominent, if noticeable at all. The exception is the last story, 'All the Other Demons'—a white trash family drama hung on the simple frame of a preteen girl's anticipation of 'The Exorcist' airing on network TV. It's insightful, hilarious, disturbing, and sweet, seemingly all at once. It felt like the most authentically told story in the book. Part of this was due to it being one of only a few stories narrated in first person, and by a sympathetic character. This more personal perspective tempers Elliott's always opulent prose, which like the infamous kudzu of the American South, threatens to overwhelm its landscape at every turn. (3.5)
April 19, 2025
"While half of the stories in Hellions explore the uncanniness of feral girlhoods, the others revolve around the archetype of “the witch”—liminal women who lurk along the border between the real and unreal."-- Julia Elliott
"lush Southern Gothic prose, unruly characters, clever science fiction concepts, strange monsters—with a general sense of wildness and adventure on every page."--Lincoln Michel
I loved this short story collection! Big review coming for The LinUp soon
"lush Southern Gothic prose, unruly characters, clever science fiction concepts, strange monsters—with a general sense of wildness and adventure on every page."--Lincoln Michel
I loved this short story collection! Big review coming for The LinUp soon
June 17, 2025
I really liked Julia Elliott's first collection The Wilds, also from Tin House. After 10 years, we finally have another volume!
The first couple stories were solid but perhaps not outstanding. Elliott reworks (for her) familiar territory: young women in messy, unsettling situations, somehow dealing with vaguely supernatural threats or challenging realities, often with dark fairy tale elements. Then a bunch of memorable gems: "The Erl King"'s tongue-in-cheek interweaving of messy magicks, messy sex, and messy academic politics; the jaundiced fairy tale of "Flying"; maternal drug-use and delirium of "The Mothers"; "Moon Witch, Moon Witch"'s hilarious alternation of corporate reality and VR dating; another disturbing fairy tale in "The Gricklemare".
Elliott's writing is always strong and cliche-free, such a pleasure to chew over. I love her charming and flawed characters, grappling for a little control in their ugly situations (as we also try to in our increasingly ugly ones).
I have to single out "Another Frequency". Like H.G. Wells' "The Door in the Wall", the protagonist repeatedly encounters an uncanny artifact (a mysterious radio station that plays weird and wonderful music); the artifact draws her into magical but ultimately troubling experiences. The story practically has my name written on it: the playlists in the story is peppered with items from my collection (Klaus Nomi! Aksak Maboul! Schnittke! Lindsay Cooper! Delia Derbyshire! etc). I tend not to enjoy extended dialog, but Elliott writes clever exchanges:
More notes:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
The first couple stories were solid but perhaps not outstanding. Elliott reworks (for her) familiar territory: young women in messy, unsettling situations, somehow dealing with vaguely supernatural threats or challenging realities, often with dark fairy tale elements. Then a bunch of memorable gems: "The Erl King"'s tongue-in-cheek interweaving of messy magicks, messy sex, and messy academic politics; the jaundiced fairy tale of "Flying"; maternal drug-use and delirium of "The Mothers"; "Moon Witch, Moon Witch"'s hilarious alternation of corporate reality and VR dating; another disturbing fairy tale in "The Gricklemare".
Elliott's writing is always strong and cliche-free, such a pleasure to chew over. I love her charming and flawed characters, grappling for a little control in their ugly situations (as we also try to in our increasingly ugly ones).
I have to single out "Another Frequency". Like H.G. Wells' "The Door in the Wall", the protagonist repeatedly encounters an uncanny artifact (a mysterious radio station that plays weird and wonderful music); the artifact draws her into magical but ultimately troubling experiences. The story practically has my name written on it: the playlists in the story is peppered with items from my collection (Klaus Nomi! Aksak Maboul! Schnittke! Lindsay Cooper! Delia Derbyshire! etc). I tend not to enjoy extended dialog, but Elliott writes clever exchanges:
[Viv is the protagonist, Josh is her son, Stella is Viv's partner]
"We couldn't start without you, Mutter," said Josh.
"You're wet," Stella observed dryly.
"The weather is weird," said Viv.
"Mother Earth is doomed," said Josh. "But have some wine."
He poured her a glass of merlot.
"Don't be nihilistic," said Stella.
"More Buddhist, actually," said Josh. "Accepting impermanence."
More notes:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
August 10, 2026
(Note: Hellions won the 2026 Carol Shields Prize!)
This was such a strong collection of stories for me - there was only one that didn't quite rise to five stars, but even that was a four star, and I think the problem was me. The writing felt so assured and effortless that I could imagine Elliott writing the stories back to back without breaking a sweat or a pencil. All of the stories are about 20-25ish pages which felt perfect, giving me enough space for a solid story arc and full immersion, followed by a satisfying ending. If you like the stories of Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado or Angela Carter I think you might like these too - they have the same imaginative flair and flirtation with the uncanny.
One of the stories is titled Hellion but I think the book title adds the 's' because each story has its own hellion. My favorite hellions are the ones in Hellion, Arcadia Lakes, All the Other Demons, and Bride which center around a tomboyish girl who definitely marches to her own drummer. Kind of a cross between Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird and Tom Sawyer. The first three are set in the American south during a sweaty, hot summer some time in the 7o's or 80's, but the last one (which is first in the book) is set in an austere medieval English monastery in winter, and has two special hellion girls: Wilda, who tries to exorcise the hellion out of herself through painful physical penance until another teenage-nun hellion arrives, Aoife, and together they go on a hedonistic (G-rated) spree in the newly deceased abbess' bedroom - which turns out to be not so austere.
In three stories, our hellion has aged into early adulthood: in Moon Witch, Moon Witch she lives in a near future world where she has a boring virtual reality-ish job, but lets loose in a stone age multiplayer VR game; in Erl King she is a grad student who outdoes the enchanted wolfish/vampirish professor who seduces her; and in Gricklemare she is an exhausted grad student in a rented cabin trying to write her dissertation and doesn't give up in the face of all kind of devilments. Our oldest hellion in is a very tired, middle-aged lesbian delivery-driver who recharges through mysterious music on the radio.
In a few stories, the hellions seem to be the uncanny creatures, rather than the humans: the witch in Flying, the maiden in The Maiden, and the 'local kids' in Mothers, a story that gets more hilarious the more I think about it.
Her novel The New and Improved Romie Futch grabbed my attention when it came out in 2015 but I never pursued it because the title gave me YA romance vibes. Not!!!! It sounds like a wild southern gothic satire, and I'm looking forward to it.
This was such a strong collection of stories for me - there was only one that didn't quite rise to five stars, but even that was a four star, and I think the problem was me. The writing felt so assured and effortless that I could imagine Elliott writing the stories back to back without breaking a sweat or a pencil. All of the stories are about 20-25ish pages which felt perfect, giving me enough space for a solid story arc and full immersion, followed by a satisfying ending. If you like the stories of Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado or Angela Carter I think you might like these too - they have the same imaginative flair and flirtation with the uncanny.
One of the stories is titled Hellion but I think the book title adds the 's' because each story has its own hellion. My favorite hellions are the ones in Hellion, Arcadia Lakes, All the Other Demons, and Bride which center around a tomboyish girl who definitely marches to her own drummer. Kind of a cross between Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird and Tom Sawyer. The first three are set in the American south during a sweaty, hot summer some time in the 7o's or 80's, but the last one (which is first in the book) is set in an austere medieval English monastery in winter, and has two special hellion girls: Wilda, who tries to exorcise the hellion out of herself through painful physical penance until another teenage-nun hellion arrives, Aoife, and together they go on a hedonistic (G-rated) spree in the newly deceased abbess' bedroom - which turns out to be not so austere.
In three stories, our hellion has aged into early adulthood: in Moon Witch, Moon Witch she lives in a near future world where she has a boring virtual reality-ish job, but lets loose in a stone age multiplayer VR game; in Erl King she is a grad student who outdoes the enchanted wolfish/vampirish professor who seduces her; and in Gricklemare she is an exhausted grad student in a rented cabin trying to write her dissertation and doesn't give up in the face of all kind of devilments. Our oldest hellion in is a very tired, middle-aged lesbian delivery-driver who recharges through mysterious music on the radio.
In a few stories, the hellions seem to be the uncanny creatures, rather than the humans: the witch in Flying, the maiden in The Maiden, and the 'local kids' in Mothers, a story that gets more hilarious the more I think about it.
Her novel The New and Improved Romie Futch grabbed my attention when it came out in 2015 but I never pursued it because the title gave me YA romance vibes. Not!!!! It sounds like a wild southern gothic satire, and I'm looking forward to it.
January 25, 2025
Many thanks to Tin House for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Every story in Hellions is captivating, unsettling, and mystical. These atmospheric tales mainly take place in the southern America and tend to follow various fascinating female characters. The whimsigoth vibes just pour out of this collection.
My favorite story has to be Arcadia Lakes, where a young girl discovers a mysterious creature in an algae-filled, drying lake. I also really enjoyed Bride, which follows a devout nun as her convent is struck by the plague. Although I've only mentioned two of the eleven stories, each one has a uniqueness to it that's difficult to explain. I highly recommend these stories to anyone looking for something fantastical, uncanny, and strange.
Every story in Hellions is captivating, unsettling, and mystical. These atmospheric tales mainly take place in the southern America and tend to follow various fascinating female characters. The whimsigoth vibes just pour out of this collection.
My favorite story has to be Arcadia Lakes, where a young girl discovers a mysterious creature in an algae-filled, drying lake. I also really enjoyed Bride, which follows a devout nun as her convent is struck by the plague. Although I've only mentioned two of the eleven stories, each one has a uniqueness to it that's difficult to explain. I highly recommend these stories to anyone looking for something fantastical, uncanny, and strange.
May 9, 2025
4.5 stars.
Reading these stories feels like the literary equivalent of cracking open a perfectly ripe pomegranate with your bare hands and messily scooping handfuls of the succulent sweet seeds into your mouth, flavor bursting on your tongue with each bite, until you’re left sticky-fingered and satiated, ruby-red juice droplets staining your lips and chin like blood.
I was truly blown away by this collection, particularly with Elliott’s luxurious and visceral prose. Everything she writes feels incredibly lush and pungent, squirming with life on the page.
“She chastises the filthy maggot of her carnality until she feels fire crackling up her backbone”
“Clouds of flies hovered…creating an atmosphere in which we seemed trapped, a cursed miasma of our own making, composed of our breath and gastrointestinal emanations, the stench of fried fish and unkempt dogs, plus the cigarette smoke that perpetually flowed from the moist charred tissue of Dad’s lungs”
Although each story varies in setting/plot/characters, there’s a strong, underlying theme woven throughout that unifies each piece: a bone deep, primal longing towards a natural existence; one in which humans live simply and organically, coexisting peacefully amongst fern and fauna as just another mammal in the animal kingdom; a “mournful collective wail”; a lament for something sacred, pure and wild.
It isn’t just sadness, though. I think what really qualifies these stories as “horror” is that underneath the lamentation is a pulsating anger - a rabid hunger for dismantlement and reclamation; a rage with roots, thick and snarling, running deep enough to penetrate the earth’s very core - volcanic and feral, simmering below the starved and shriveling surface of soil we’ve so carelessly pillaged and poisoned. There is an ominous feeling of dereliction and neglect haunting these pages, leaving the putrid stench of rot in its wake.
Brimming with rich descriptions of wildlife and vegetation, lush soil, wet leaves, organic musks, soft pelts, herbs and wine and blood and fire…Elliot doesn’t shy away from the horrors that accompany the beauty of organic matter; mold and maggots, gristle and sinew, piss, shit, filth and decay. Hellions explores the the divine mysteries of nature while also exposing the ugly underbelly of its wrath; evidence of magic both light and dark, but always wild.
Reading these stories feels like the literary equivalent of cracking open a perfectly ripe pomegranate with your bare hands and messily scooping handfuls of the succulent sweet seeds into your mouth, flavor bursting on your tongue with each bite, until you’re left sticky-fingered and satiated, ruby-red juice droplets staining your lips and chin like blood.
I was truly blown away by this collection, particularly with Elliott’s luxurious and visceral prose. Everything she writes feels incredibly lush and pungent, squirming with life on the page.
“She chastises the filthy maggot of her carnality until she feels fire crackling up her backbone”
“Clouds of flies hovered…creating an atmosphere in which we seemed trapped, a cursed miasma of our own making, composed of our breath and gastrointestinal emanations, the stench of fried fish and unkempt dogs, plus the cigarette smoke that perpetually flowed from the moist charred tissue of Dad’s lungs”
Although each story varies in setting/plot/characters, there’s a strong, underlying theme woven throughout that unifies each piece: a bone deep, primal longing towards a natural existence; one in which humans live simply and organically, coexisting peacefully amongst fern and fauna as just another mammal in the animal kingdom; a “mournful collective wail”; a lament for something sacred, pure and wild.
It isn’t just sadness, though. I think what really qualifies these stories as “horror” is that underneath the lamentation is a pulsating anger - a rabid hunger for dismantlement and reclamation; a rage with roots, thick and snarling, running deep enough to penetrate the earth’s very core - volcanic and feral, simmering below the starved and shriveling surface of soil we’ve so carelessly pillaged and poisoned. There is an ominous feeling of dereliction and neglect haunting these pages, leaving the putrid stench of rot in its wake.
Brimming with rich descriptions of wildlife and vegetation, lush soil, wet leaves, organic musks, soft pelts, herbs and wine and blood and fire…Elliot doesn’t shy away from the horrors that accompany the beauty of organic matter; mold and maggots, gristle and sinew, piss, shit, filth and decay. Hellions explores the the divine mysteries of nature while also exposing the ugly underbelly of its wrath; evidence of magic both light and dark, but always wild.
Read
August 14, 2025delightfully, the angela carter comparison holds up for once (invocations, like invocations of t-pynch, tending to be spurious if not straight-up fraudulent). re prose, the "lush" descriptor is spot on, both in the "can't eat more than a few bites of this chocolate cake" sense & the "area behind the train tracks that's never been weed-whacked and looks like a dang jungle" sense. main issue is that every story seems to end in the same spielberg mode w/ chars looking up in awe at sth ineffable. "the mothers" in particular seemed to wanna be a rachel ingalls style horror story but reverts to spielberg. bring some of the same sweltering wildness seen elsewhere to closing grafs & we'd really be cooking w/ gas here
July 2, 2025
My only wish is that some stories were longer!!!! Gricklemare, Gricklemare!
June 12, 2026
The blurb on the back of the book drew me in but sadly the stories themselves didn’t. I think there was one story that I actually liked and the others just left me totally bored. The fact that it took me three days to read this when normally a book this length takes me a day to finish should tell you what you need to know about how I felt about this collection.
Read
May 18, 2025strange.. i liked a couple of the stories but unsure how i felt about this overall.
July 14, 2025
“Little shits,” she hisses.
August 10, 2026
i was locked in from the first story of this collection. the lush, gorgeous prose is everything. i have passed away.
May 24, 2025
really excellent short stories that range from Angela Carter-esque riffs on feminist fantasy to speculative fiction with sci-fi dystopias. all are set in the heady, loamy, humid backdrop of the South - you can feel sweat prickling on your spine as you read. the characters are trapped in a slow-boiling heat as they navigate alienation and climate change, anxiety about which permeate every story even when not named explicitly. childhood and the uncanniness of kids run through most of the stories as well. a fantastic collection and an author I'm newly enthused about.
January 16, 2025
ARC Review
Thank you to Tin House Books for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Hellions by Julia Elliott is a collection of short stories that, while not strict in their theming, contain elements of the supernatural and sublime. The stories, often set in the American south, are highly atmospheric and often times create imagery that is both incredibly vivid and incredibly grotesque at the same time.
The stories are very high brow, in both their intelligent references and theming. For readers with a love for brief, challenging, but ultimately worthwhile short stories, the collection is a wonderful choice. I would caution that readers who don’t enjoy works that don’t have concrete plot arcs or finite explanations. Part of the allure of this book is the somewhat mysterious ambiguity that defines many of the stories. It is often impossible to discern whether a character is in reality or dreaming, and whether creatures are real or imagined.
As with all collections of short stories or essays, not all of them are going to land as successfully as the others. However, Elliott’s works display a high level of consistency across selections. Personally, I found that the most compelling story was ‘Gricklemare,’ but I did particularly enjoy ‘Another Frequency’ as well.
One of my favorite things that Elliott does throughout Hellions is describe the wild, at times feral, highly magical time of girlhood. Whether her young, female characters are raising alligators, riding shoeless on mini bikes, imagining fantastical worlds on other planets, or obsessing over demons, they defy the conventions of traditional imagery. These young girls and teens have deep connections to the natural and the supernatural and are hellions as much as any of the boys depicted in the book.
I found this to be a somewhat challenging read at times. It was nevertheless enjoyable and unusual. 4/5 stars!
Thank you to Tin House Books for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Hellions by Julia Elliott is a collection of short stories that, while not strict in their theming, contain elements of the supernatural and sublime. The stories, often set in the American south, are highly atmospheric and often times create imagery that is both incredibly vivid and incredibly grotesque at the same time.
The stories are very high brow, in both their intelligent references and theming. For readers with a love for brief, challenging, but ultimately worthwhile short stories, the collection is a wonderful choice. I would caution that readers who don’t enjoy works that don’t have concrete plot arcs or finite explanations. Part of the allure of this book is the somewhat mysterious ambiguity that defines many of the stories. It is often impossible to discern whether a character is in reality or dreaming, and whether creatures are real or imagined.
As with all collections of short stories or essays, not all of them are going to land as successfully as the others. However, Elliott’s works display a high level of consistency across selections. Personally, I found that the most compelling story was ‘Gricklemare,’ but I did particularly enjoy ‘Another Frequency’ as well.
One of my favorite things that Elliott does throughout Hellions is describe the wild, at times feral, highly magical time of girlhood. Whether her young, female characters are raising alligators, riding shoeless on mini bikes, imagining fantastical worlds on other planets, or obsessing over demons, they defy the conventions of traditional imagery. These young girls and teens have deep connections to the natural and the supernatural and are hellions as much as any of the boys depicted in the book.
I found this to be a somewhat challenging read at times. It was nevertheless enjoyable and unusual. 4/5 stars!
July 22, 2026
some stories were much stronger than others. some of them could have been combined. i loved the southern gothic theme that was a part of multiple timelines and made me feel nostalgic for places i've never been. i also really appreciate all of the references to other literature and music and artists, especially because the author lists and cites them at the end of the book. i feel like i can smell this book but i would read again
July 30, 2026
I read the first 5 stories and feel like that was enough for me. Four of the five were fairy tales of a sort, people who wander into enchanted places, or have enchantment pursue them. It is a wild and menacing magic, feral and bold. I just don't enjoy a steady diet of those kinds of stories.
I liked Hellion, about a tomboy showing her distant cousin around her dusty corner of Florida. She reminded me of my mom. In this story, it's the kids, not the magic, that is feral.
I liked Hellion, about a tomboy showing her distant cousin around her dusty corner of Florida. She reminded me of my mom. In this story, it's the kids, not the magic, that is feral.
September 2, 2026
Sticky sweaty stinky swampy spooky sweet South Carolina in all her glory. Read in late summer Columbia for maximum effect.
July 23, 2025
I thought the writing itself was very good, but the stories were strange and didn’t really pull me in. They were a bit horror, a bit magical… and though it’s usually my type, I wasn’t intrigued.
I would read another book by this writer, I find her super talented. This one was just not really for me.
Thanks Net Galley & Saga Press for an advanced copy of this book.
I would read another book by this writer, I find her super talented. This one was just not really for me.
Thanks Net Galley & Saga Press for an advanced copy of this book.
June 1, 2026
Short stories just aren’t for me unless they’re written by one of my favs
Read
April 9, 2025this was my first ever short story anthology read, and I really really enjoyed it. Julias writing is intoxicating, drawing you in. I picked this up on a whim at a book festival and I’m very glad i did, it’s definitely one of my favorites of the year and it’s exciting to give that to a local author
August 5, 2025
best book I’ve read this year by far!! every story pulled me in, was laced with mystery, magic and felt strangely nostalgic in the ways they talked about girlhood/growing up. I just wish some of the stories were longer
March 12, 2026
There could have probably been one less story in this collection -- a few of them started to blur together tonally and thematically.
That said, Julia Elliott is a chameleon of a writer. Characters and narrators feel believable and lived in while the collection runs the gamut from old-school, rural, Stephen King horror, to domestic drama, to what I can only describe as Gothic-Mytho-Campus Erotica. What a trip.
Weirdly sexy and completely out of this world.
That said, Julia Elliott is a chameleon of a writer. Characters and narrators feel believable and lived in while the collection runs the gamut from old-school, rural, Stephen King horror, to domestic drama, to what I can only describe as Gothic-Mytho-Campus Erotica. What a trip.
Weirdly sexy and completely out of this world.
May 18, 2025
these discrete slice of life stories are all tied together by the same richness, gothic tone, & otherworldly wildness. carmen Maria Machado said it best - “rich and feral.”
March 23, 2025
This is one of the best story collections I've read in years. It reads like the work of Angela Carter and Karen Russell merged into a new dark, lovely and strange form.
July 9, 2025
Usually I am suspicious of author blurbs on books, but Carmen Maria Machado nails it. These are indeed “lush, feral” stories. Intense and word twisting in her cadence, Elliot is a masterful writer and crafter of tales. This was a very worthy read.
May 13, 2025
Elliot’s Hellions brings together 11 fantastical short stories that centers on the themes including coming-of-age, solitude, good and evil, organized religion, and the occult. The sci-fi component usually develops as the stories unfold. Before long, Elliot coaxes spells and cauldrons, monsters and witches, normies and animalistic creatures—that is, Hellions. My three favorite stories are Hellions, Bride, and The Mothers, while my three least enjoyed stories are All the Other Demons, Flying, and Moon Witch, Moon Witch. Elliot’s clairvoyant writing puts your under “a kind of spell . . . Something [we] . . . used to believe in when [we were] . . . children.” Under her influence, this luminescent feeling surges back, “a reckless sense of wonder that [we have] . . . forgotten.”
Displaying 1 - 30 of 177 reviews