Synopsis:
The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls is the debut short story collection from the author of FROST BITE and CHOPPING SPREE.
The Dead Spot. A corner drenched in shadow. An earthquake’s epicenter. The part of a roller coaster ride where the car rounds the final curve and all force dissipates, leaving those trapped beneath the safety bar feeling sick and hollow.
The Dead Spot is a heart-wrenching collection of seventeen stories where lost girls and women live and die, where they laugh, cry, and disappear from view around that final curve.
Introduction by JAW McCarthy (Shirley Jackson Award finalist for Sometimes We’re Cruel)
My Edition:
E-ARC provided by the author
My Thoughts:
The Dead Spot is a really lovely collection of short horror stories about girls and women in situations that test them to their absolute limits. And that will not always happen in a way you might expect – that is one of my favorite things about this collection. See, although everything fits together marvelously, somehow each one of the stories feels vastly different. It’s almost as though Angela Sylvaine wants to give the reader a taste of all the things she can do – and she does them well.
Some of my absolute favorite stories in The Dead Spot (although to be real, I really liked them all):
- Astronaut Dreams: Ellie is a young girl who wants nothing more than to be an astronaut. This story was so thoroughly not what I expected, and so emotionally impactful that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. It is the first story in the collection, and I actually had to put down the book and sit with that one for a while before I picked it back up.
- Playing Tricks: Wow. What a tremendously fucked up story of mental/emotional abuse this is. It hits all the biggies – emotional manipulation, gaslighting, the works. Dina is a character you just want to hug.
- Antifreeze and Sweet Peas: If you’ve read Not All Monsters, you’ve read this one. And it is still fantastic and tragic and wonderful.
- Return of the Wilderness Girls: As the title implies, this one is about a group of 13 girls in a small town that were previously missing, but mysteriously start returning one by one from the wilderness. But something about them is a little off…is it trauma stemming from a time they absolutely don’t remember, or is it something more? I love it, I love it, I love it.
- Burnt Embers and Bluebirds: Farrah is an unhoused girl who likes to hang out at the library. While she’s there, she becomes captivated by the friendship of a group of girls she refers to as the Paper Doll Girls. They’re perfect, and their friendship is perfect. Farrah just wants to know what it’s like to be loved and accepted. Blame my book-loving heart for this if you want, but I absolutely adored this story.
- Clutching Air: This is another one that is deeply emotional. A girl finds healing in community and art, but gentrification comes ripping through the neighborhood destroying culture and community alike.
My Rating:
You won’t find a weak story among the bunch. And a few of these will probably be sticking around my brain for quite a while. Read this book. Tell your friends. Buy it as a gift. Whatever, just don’t sleep on Angela Sylvaine.
The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls
By: Angela Sylvaine
Dark Matter INK
Published: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781958598276
Paperback, E-book
188 Pages
