Anna From Gustine > Recent Status Updates

2 stars. Monster by Elizabeth MacNeal. A man tries to gain scientific fame by searching for fossils. Big ones. I didn't care for this story. There's nothing wrong with it and I can see others enjoying it. I appreciated the dinosaur angle but I found all the characters unpleasant and I really didn't care what happened. I also kinda knew what would happen pretty early on. Again, I didn't care for it but others may.

A high 3 stars. Confinement by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. Back to Victorian times! A pregnant woman gives birth and goes through a period of confinement with her newborn. However, she is seeing things....I can't help but think of The Yellow Wallpaper which must have influenced the story. It was interesting with a few original details but predictable overall. I've seen it before.

A high 4 stars. The Hanging of the Greens by Andrew Michael Hurley. The only story set in modern times. A man carries a message of apology from a former lodger to a couple on an isolated farmstead. It's a little clunky at first but then it ramps up into brutal folk horror. Chilling.

4.5 stars. The Chillingham Chair by Laura Purcell. This story is about a young woman who breaks her foot in a horse-riding accident right before her younger sister is to marry the lord of the manor. The lord lends the main character his deceased father's wheelchair so she can get around. Strange things happen. What happened in that house? Original elements made this enjoyable!

****Lily Wilt by Jess Kidd. 4 stars. This story was a good one. I've read the same plot before but this iteration was effective. A young Victorian photographer is hired to take photos of a young woman who has died but whose body will not decompose. Enough said!

*** The Eel Singers by Natasha Pulley. Three stars. This story involves the main characters from the author's book "The Watchmaker of Filigree Street" who decide to spend Christmas in the rural English countryside. Strange things start to happen. This story was fine. It did get creepy in the middle but I never read the book from where the characters originate. I felt lost and disconnected for the first half.

***1/2. Thwaite's Tenant by Imogen Hermes Gowar. Three and a half stars. An abused wife flees with her son to a house her father keeps for his own mistresses. This was an interesting premise highlighting the constraints and injustices wives experienced in Victorian England. I almost gave it 4 stars but the ending didn't quite land. It had an unexpected swerve which was not wholly satisfying.

***A Study in Black and White by Bridget Collins. Three stars. A man in Victorian England discovers a mysterious black and white house with topiary in the form of chess pieces. A chess enthusiast himself, he decides to rent it. The atmosphere and set up worked, but the ending was too abrupt for me.

** Told After Supper by Jerome K. Jerome (1891). Two stars. It's a silly novelette meant to parody Christmas ghost stories. The narrator spends Christmas with family and a group of the males get drunk and tell ghost stories.

*** Someone In the Lift by LP Hartley (1955) Three stars. Creepiest story in anthology, but it gets three stars because I didn't understand the ending and had to look it up! A little boy whose family is spending Christmas at a hotel thinks he keeps seeing someone in the hotel lift.

** A Christmas Meeting by Rosemary Timperley (1952) 2 stars. A woman spends Christmas Eve alone in her boarding room when an unexpected guest barges in. Short story with abrupt ending. Meh.