Tag Archives: Halloween

October 31, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Things I Love About Halloween


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Happy Halloween to everyone who celebrates it! This is my favourite holiday of the year, so I’m thrilled to see October 31 come around again on the calendar.

In previous years, I’ve blogged about My Favourite Halloween Treats, Halloween Picture Books, and Halloween Things I’ve Never Done  for Top Ten Tuesday’s Halloween Freebie post.

This time I’m going to talk about why I love this holiday so much, especially since I wasn’t allowed to celebrate it as a kid as I’ve mentioned before.

So what’s so fantastic about this holiday?

1. Presents Aren’t Needed

It’s a relief to celebrate without being expected to give or receive gifts. I have a lot of mixed feelings about that tradition.

Two white people are each holding up a sugar cookie that has been decorated for Halloween. One cookie is shaped like a ghost and the other one a skeleton. 2. Candy and Baked Goods

Halloween candy and baked goods are delicious. If I receive something I can’t eat for allergy reasons, there are a lot of other people who can eat it and who wouldn’t mind taking it home.

3. Free Expression

This is the only time of year when it’s socially acceptable for adults to dress in costumes (unless you’re going to a comic conference or something). I love having the freedom to be anyone I want for that night…even if, truth be told, most Halloween nights find me no longer dressing up at all.

4. You Can Eat Anything 

I enjoy cooking, but I do not like the pressure that can come on other holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas to follow a rigid menu and make all of the dishes the exact same way every time. There is no set menu for Halloween. You could eat pizza, samosas, Pad Thai, or a nice, big salad if you wish!

5. Halloween Music

Don’t tell anyone, but I start listening to Halloween playlists in September. I love jumping around from lighthearted kids’ songs to the season finale song of Supernatural to all sorts of other spooky music.

6. Autumn Is Gorgeous 

I love walking through crunchy leaves in the park and seeing the brilliant red, yellow, orange, and occasionally purple leaves still clinging to their trees or bushes.  Halloween is often pretty close to peak colour here in Toronto, so this is yet another reason why I love this holiday.

7. Ghost Stories 

Whether I’m going on a ghost tour, reading a ghost story, or watching a paranormal film, I think it’s interesting to explore the spirits’ motives for haunting a particular location.

A jack-o-lantern is sitting in a patch of glass. There is a candle inside of the lantern that is making it glow orange and yellow. It’s dark outside, so few other details can be seen other than the lush grass it is sitting on. 8. Carving Pumpkins

Am I good at it? Not really, but it’s still amusing. When else are you going to have permission to play with food? (Or potential food, rather).

9. Acknowledgement of Death

A friend of mine died in a car accident when we were in high school. One of the weirdest parts of that experience for me was how quickly people stopped talking about him. We were all grieving, and of course I respected everyone who found it too hard to discuss him or his accident. Halloween is a relief to me because it’s one time of year when more folks are willing to broach such topics and remember the dead.  Yes, there is pain in those moments…but over time there can also be so much joy to be found in retelling funny or touching stories about those who are no longer with us.

10. Fear Is Fun In Small Doses When You’re Not Really In Danger

Wow, that was a wordy sentence! But, yeah, I do see the value in feeling a little fear from a spooky movie or ghost story when you know that it is 100% fiction. This is such a different feeling than being afraid of something or someone who could actually harm you.

 

 

 

 

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October 26, 2023 · 1:00 am

A Review of Wilhelmina Quigley – Monkey See, Monkey Do

Book cover for Wilhelmina Quigley - Monkey See, Monkey Do by Liese Sherwood-Fabre. Image on cover shows a drawing of a blue and green stuffed toy monkey sitting on a jack-o-lantern. The monkey is wearing a black scarf and a black witch’s hat that has a gold buckle on it. Its left arm is raised as if to wave a friendly hello to the audience. Title: Wilhelmina Quigley – Monkey See, Monkey Do

Author: Liese Sherwood-Fabre

Publisher: Little Elm Press (Self-Published)

Publication Date: June 5, 2023

Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 32 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A young witch with unpredictable powers. A complex transformation spell. What could possibly go wrong?

Following a magical mishap, Wilhelmina Quigley accidentally transforms her classmate, Fynn, into a monkey. With a frightened Fynn running from those who could help him, Wilhelmina sets off on an extraordinary adventure to recapture and transform the monkey back to a boy. From incantation blunders to misfired spells, each step along the way brings laughter, surprises, and valuable lessons about self-discovery.

“Wilhelmina Quigley: Monkey See, Monkey Do” is a captivating short story that will whisk readers away to a realm where anything is possible and where the most important lessons are learned when you believe in your own abilities. Join Wilhelmina on her extraordinary quest and prepare to be spellbound by the enchantment that unfolds page after page.

If you enjoy humorous fantasy stories about young witches, get this story now.

Review:

Embarrassment is part of life.

Wilhelmina was a well-written and amusing protagonist. She talked and behaved exactly how a kid her age should, and some of the things she did made me shake my head as I remembered my own middle school blunders that were horribly embarrassing at the time but that I can now find the humour in. It can be difficult to capture that awkward, in-between stage of life accurately, so I have to commend Ms. Sherwood-Fabre for pulling it off.

I would have loved to see more world building in this short story. For example, Wilhelmina‘s teacher struck me as a rather exasperated and impatient person. Was this because the teacher was having a bad day, the magical society they lived in was not very forgiving of honest mistakes due to the high stakes of misused magic, or that bad moods were a side effect of spells going horribly wrong? I could see arguments for any of these explanations and a few more besides them, but the text never explained what was going on here. Having that answer could have helped fill in some holes for me about how their culture was different from all of the non-magical ones out there.

With that being said, the humor and low stakes here were delightful. So many of the fantasy and Halloween stories I review have high stakes and bloody battles that it was refreshing to sit back and see how a young witch learned from her mistakes and tried to make them right again. Not everything has to be about saving the world, after all! Sometimes trying to turn a classmate back into a kid again before the school day ends  is all the tension one needs to enjoy a plot.

Wilhelmina Quigley – Monkey See, Monkey Do was a gentle little Halloween-themed tale that both kids and adults can enjoy.

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October 24, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: LGBTQ+ Horror Novels


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

An opened book is sitting next to a small pumpkin on a dusty wooden table. There is an illustration of some sort of gnome or other heavily-bearded figure on the right hand side of the page. It looks like an illustration from a dark fairy tale, maybe? Behind the book and pumpkin is a black candle and some orange and black sticks sitting in black pots. The original theme for this week was “atmospheric books.”

I was utterly stumped by it, so I’m going to turn my response into a Halloween post instead. Here are ten LGBTQ+ horror novels I have not read yet because I’ve lost a lot of interest in the horror genre since 2020.

When I do read horror these days, I avoid pandemic-related themes and am much less willing to read anything gory that I was in the past. (Granted, gore was only a rare and occasional part of what I read back then, but now I can do so much less of it than even that!).

It’s been almost four years with few if any adjustments to these mental rules for myself, so this might be a permanent change to my reading habits.

1. The Luminous Dead  by Caitlin Starling

2. Carmilla: The First Vampire by Amy Chu

3. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

4. Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

5. Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling

6. Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

7. Evergreen by Devin Greenlee

8. The Shadow of Oz by J. Michael Wright II

9. To Kill a Shadow by Katherine Quinn

10. Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

If you’ve read any of these, please feel free to tell me what you thought of them.

If you have other suggestions for Halloween and/or speculative fiction LGBTQ+ reads, I’d love to hear them, too.

Finally, if neither of those apply or if you’re in a chatty mood and want to answer multiple questions, tell me how the pandemic has (or hasn’t) changed your reading habits. I’ve spoken to several folks who had similar reactions to mine and wonder how common it is.

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October 11, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: The Most Creative Halloween Costume I’ve Worn

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

So here’s the thing about being a preacher’s kid: it can give you a childhood that’s a little off the beaten path in certain ways.

My family didn’t celebrate the secular, mainstream version of Halloween until I was 11*, so I only had a few years of trick-or-treating and picking out a costume before I aged out of that tradition. I  was so thrilled to finally be able to dress up, get some candy, and say “Trick or Treat” that I didn’t worry about choosing creative costumes. One year I was a nurse, another one I was a mime, and I don’t remember what I decided to be that third year. I wasn’t allowed to pick anything scary or gross, and late October used to be a much colder time of year than it often is now, so I probably picked the warmest costume I could find.

*We went to Harvest Festivals instead which are a Christian alternative to Halloween for some denominations. They were an interesting mixture of the sort of cute Halloween or autumn party you might throw for a class of preschoolers and some scary skits about various religious topics like the spiritual dangers of trick-or-treating. I don’t believe we were allowed to dress up for them because that was considered sinful, but we did get candy, a few small toys, and to play fun games like bobbing for apples!

The most creative Halloween costume I’ve seen on someone else was made to look like a pink birthday cake. This person spent hours decorating cardboard to look like a cake, and I think they used pink and white tissue paper or something to give the appearance of light, fluffy frosting on the cake. It was a beautiful costume but apparently rather stiff and uncomfortable to wear.

One year I also saw about a half dozen people dressed as dominos (the game pieces, not the pizza place). I always wondered how they decided who would be which domino and where they got their costumes from.

a hazy pink photo of a ghost standing in a hallway that’s lit by a pink light. The viewer is looking at it from the perspective of a pitch black room where nothing else can be seen in the foreground. I’ve never gotten into dressing up for Halloween as an adult, but I know what I’d pick if I did.

A ghost.

Think about it: you get to stay warm, comfortable, and anonymous under your cozy bedsheet, gently frighten the locals without resorting to anything gory or offensive, and maybe even rattle some cool metal chains.

What’s not to like about that?

It’s a vastly underrated costume choice if you ask me. I haven’t seen anyone dressed up as a ghost in Toronto in years, and I think this deserves a strong comeback.

If I’m going to dress up, it’s going to be in something comfortable and practical even if it is Halloween.

Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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September 14, 2023 · 1:00 am

Alcohol-Fuelled Bad Decisions: A Review of Autumn Moon

Book cover for Autumn Moon by J.T. McCallum. Image on cover shows a wolf howling outside in the middle of the night. A profile of the wolf’s head and neck can be seen against the dim light of a huge full moon. Title: Autumn Moon

Author: J.T. McCallum

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 9, 2020

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 12 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

An attack from a supernatural assailant forces a group of drunken bar patrons to fend for their lives as they try to survive the night.

Review:

Content Warning: Alcohol, characters getting drunk, and some brief scenes of blood, murder, and violence in a bar brawl.

Not everyone knows what to do in an emergency.

The identity of the supernatural assailant becomes evident almost immediately in this story. I’ll refrain from naming it this review for those of you who want to avoid even the mildest of spoilers, but knowing the answer ahead of time will in no way ruin the storyline for anyone who figures it out from context clues or reads other reviews that do give it away. I liked the way the author explored a terrifying interpretation of the relationship between humans and something so different from us, especially since many other contemporary stories about this topics tend to romanticize an incredibly dangerous and unpredictable creature.

Honestly, twelve pages isn’t a lot of space to include character development, but Mr. McCallum took advantage of every inch of them to demonstrate how the unnamed protagonist’s curiosity, cowardice, studiousness, and clumsiness swirled together to try to keep him alive. I can’t say he was someone I’d necessarily want to hang out with due to how little we had in common, but I was intrigued by this character’s journey and wanted to see if he’d make it out of the bar okay after everything fell apart in an instant.  

The final sentence was what convinced me to give this a perfect rating. Yes, the earlier scenes were predictable for anyone who has read much Halloween-adjacent horror or fantasy at all, but this wasn’t the sort of tale that demanded a clever plot twist. What kept me reading was wondering how he was going to react once he realized what the audience figured out much earlier, and this was where the writing excelled. I grinned when I finished the last word and wished there were thousands more of them. If that’s not worthy of a five-star rating, what is?

Autumn Moon was exactly the sort of scary read I needed to kick off the Halloween season. 

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October 28, 2022 · 1:00 am

A Review of Vespasian Moon’s Fabulous Autumn Carnival

Vespasian Moon’s Fabulous Autumn Carnival - A Long Short Story by Berthold Gambrel book cover. Image on cover is a drawing of a large yellow full moon with a black bat flying near the top of it in the sky. There are two jack o lanterns at the bottom of the cover near the title. Title: Vespasian Moon’s Fabulous Autumn Carnival – A Long Short Story

Author: Berthold Gambrel

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 18, 2019

Genres: Paranormal, Mystery, Romance, Holiday, Humour

Length: 54 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Federal Agent Jane Raczyck is tired of her job. So is Sheriff Sixtus Davis, the head law enforcement officer in the town of Turpin’s Gulch. But when Raczyck’s agency sends her to work with Davis on combating the drug epidemic in the small Appalachian hamlet, the two are compelled to investigate the local carnival and its mysterious impresario… even though they’d much rather be doing other things together.

Review:

Content Warning: References to drug abuse, multi-generational poverty, and some of the negative consequences of living in an insular community like prejudice against and a deep distrust of outsiders. I won’t discuss these subjects in my review, and they were a minor part of an otherwise pretty lighthearted plot.

Small towns are supposed to be sleepy, peaceful little places where nothing weird ever happens….right?

The main characters were a hoot. Neither of them seemed all that emotionally invested in carrying out the roles in society that they were supposed to be fulfilling. Even when Jane behaved like a federal agent and Davis took his job as head law enforcement officer in Turpin’s Gulch seriously, there was still always an faint undercurrent of restlessness and snark in their personalities that always made me wonder how they’d break the unwritten rules of how they were supposed to act next based on their occupations and gender identities. This was exactly what the setting needed in order to thrive, and it made me wish I’d ignored my overflowing to be read list and jumped ahead to this tale when it first came out.

I loved seeing how the narrator broke the fourth wall and spoke directly to the audience when necessary. For example, this was how Jane was described: “Now, because standards of beauty vary greatly, let me simply say that she had whatever you consider to be the most attractive hair color and style, atop whatever you think is the ideal face shape, with skin colored in the precise shade of pigment you like the best,” and it made me laugh out loud when I read it. Of course the audience’s preconceptions and tastes matter when describing a beautiful woman, and it tickled my funny bone to see that addressed so openly.  Do keep an eye out for other unexpected moments like this while reading because i can’t possibly list them all in this review.

The paranormal elements of the plot were beautifully understated. Many of these scenes that included them could be explained away with rational alternatives to what some characters assumed was happening there. I love ambigious stuff like that, especially when it’s followed up with scenes that gently nudge the reader in the particular direction the author wants you go while still leaving room for other interpretations for those who wish to hang onto their own ideas about the origins of previous spooky moments. Yes, I’m being vague in this paragraph on purpose. If you want to know more, you’ll have to read this book!

While no prior knowledge of Appalachian culture is required to understand the storyline, readers who are from that culture or who have knowledge of it in other ways will find some gems here. I nodded and chuckled as I read certain passages because of how much they reminded me of certain people I knew when I was a kid or of cultural references that I rarely see mentioned in fiction.

Vespasian Moon’s Fabulous Autumn Carnival was everything I was hoping it would be and more.

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October 27, 2022 · 1:00 am

A Review of Samantha, 25, on October 31

Samantha, 25, on October 31 by Adam Bertocci book cover. Image on cover show a young red haired woman wearing a witches hat and cloak. She looks surprised as the wind attempts to blow her pointy hat off of her head. Title: Samantha, 25, on October 31

Author: Adam Bertocci

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 12, 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 50 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Samantha hates her job, her debt and her general circumstances, and if that weren’t enough, her first post-pandemic Halloween isn’t shaping up to be any fun. Unenthused about the prospect of another day (and week and month and year) stuck working in a boring health food store, Samantha hopes that dressing as a witch will help recapture the magic in her life… or at least conjure up a little Halloween fun.

But when a mysterious black cat crosses her path, Samantha’s holiday hijinks take a turn for the weird, culminating in a spooky confrontation with the scariest horror of all: her own future.

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Adam Bertocci has been praised by Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New Republic, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Back Stage, Broadway World, E!, Maxim, IGN, Wired, Film Threat and more. This wistful-yet-witchy short story explores the mysteries of improvised cat care, growing up, and what’s really important in life.

Review:

Content Warning:  Witches and witchcraft. This is also set during the Covid-19 pandemic and contains a few references to things like social distancing, proper hand washing, and wearing a face mask in public. No one caught Covid during the storyline, though.

Halloween magic is for everyone.

This novella captured the frustration of working in retail or other dead-end jobs perfectly. Even though she was grateful to have work when so many others were laid off during the Covid-19 pandemic, Samantha was bored and restless at Esterbrook’s Natural Market. Her history degree hadn’t panned out the way she hoped they would, and she couldn’t see how her circumstances would change for the foreseeable future. I had a lot of sympathy for her and was curious to see if her dreams would finally come true. This wasn’t something I was expecting to find in a spooky Halloween read, but it fit the themes perfectly.

Samantha was a likeable and intelligent protagonist. She was the sort of person I’d love to be friends with in real life.  I enjoyed seeing how one of her biggest flaws, her tendency to ramble on when other people were hoping she’d give them a clear yes or no as a response, changed the course of her destiny. It’s always nice to see characters who are given genuine challenges to overcome and whose weaknesses make a meaningful difference to the plot.

One of the biggest reasons why I chose a five-star review had to do with how the fantasy elements of the plot were handled. Yes, I know that sentence is a vague one, but I need to be careful how I word this in order to avoid spoilers, but Mr. Bertocci did a marvellous job of playing around with the audience’s expectations of how witches should behave and how a fantasy story should unfold. He clearly knew this genre well and wasn’t afraid to turn certain tropes upside down in order to keep me guessing. Bravo for that!

Samantha, 25, on October 31 was perfect.

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October 26, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Scariest Real Life Ghost Story

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Blurry black-and-white photo of a ghostly-white woman wearing a long-sleeved dress and wearing her black hair half over her face. Unless you count the loud footsteps that sometimes rumble up and down my in-laws stairs (but that are probably just coming from a noisy neighbour in the other home in their duplex), I have never seen or interacted with a ghost.

With that being said, my father had a frightening and bizarre experience one night while sleeping at my grandfather’s home about thirty years ago.

This home was built by my grandfather on land that has been in our family for generations. There have been no sudden deaths, acts of violence, or any other tragedies in that house or on that land for as long as anyone in the family can recall. It’s a peaceful place, and yet the story of the black-eyed woman still happened.

Dad was sleeping in bed next to mom when he felt the bed gently shake as someone sat on it in the middle of the night. He awoke to see his wife sitting on the end of the bed staring at him.

It took him a minute to remember that mom did not have black eyes. That is to say, the eyes of the woman looking him did not have pupils, irises, or sclera. They were coal black from beginning to end. She otherwise looked exactly like his wife.

He looked over to the side and saw his actual wife sleeping quietly beside him, so he reached forward to swat the black-eyed stranger away. His hand couldn’t touch anything solid where she sat, and yet she was still there looking at him.

”Get out in the name of Jesus!” He said to the black-eyed woman. She disappeared like a mist.

He was not able to fall back asleep again that night.

Let’s add a few more pieces of information to the mystery:

1) During that time, my parents were trying to decide whether to make some life-changing career decisions that would make it much easier for them to pay the bills and even save a little bit of money for the future. Saying yes to those opportunities would also increase their stress and decrease the amount of time they had for anything other than work and finishing college (for my mom) and mean our family would need to move a few thousand miles away from where we lived at the time.

2) My father has seasonal allergies that required him to take allergy medicine before bed in order to be decongested enough to sleep. He is also known to be someone who occasionally has trouble transitioning from sleeping to being fully alert, especially if he’s interrupted during deep sleep.

3) They belonged to a denomination that worried about evil spirits and demons more than many other faiths and denominations do. Avoiding and casting out these spirits were common topics of conversation in our social circles.

So this could have been a hypnogogic hallucination. That is to say, a hallucination that took place while his brain was still in the process of waking up. These types of hallucinations can include seeing, feeling, and hearing things that are not actually there because your mind is still dreaming at that time. They are not dangerous, just a quirk of the human mind.

On the other hand, my mother has a sibling who had night terrors and incidents of sleep walking when he slept in that room as a kid. Maybe it’s a coincidence, or maybe not.

No one else has seen the black-eyed woman at my grandparents’ home to the best of my knowledge, but this is the scariest real-life (possible?) ghost story I know. I will leave it up to all of you decide if you’d rather believe it was a spirit, a mental process that can be explained by our current understanding of psychology and neurology, or something else entirely.

Happy (almost) Halloween!

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October 20, 2022 · 1:00 am

Running to Safety: A Review of One Dark Hallow’s Eve

One Dark Hallows Eve by Eldritch BlacI book cover. Image on cover shows a drawing of two sinister glowing jack-o-lanterns sitting at the bottom of a hill on the night of a full moon. A house and a leafless tree sit at the top of the hill. Title: One Dark Hallow’s Eve

Author: Eldritch Black

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 22, 2015

Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Paranormal, Horror, Contemporary, Historical

Length: 43 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Beware it’s Halloween and the Pumpkin Men are coming.

It’s All Hallow’s Eve and Owen Weeks is not having a good day. Something’s stirring in the lake by his house, the dead leaves beneath this shoes crunch like bones, and even the brambles seem to twitch when he’s not looking.

Nothing’s right.

But things get a lot worse as Owen discovers a terrifying stranger hiding in an abandoned farmhouse. A dark spell is cast. Old magic, magic that raises a terrifying horde of nightmarish creatures.

As the monsters descend upon the village, Owen realizes there’s only one place left to go…across the lake. But can he survive the horror of the legends said to live below its muddy waters?

The clock’s ticking toward midnight, and soon it will be the hour of the Pumpkin Men and ancient terrors from a distant land.

One Dark Hallow’s Eve is a lost tale from Eldritch Black’s The Book of Kindly Deaths. Read it now and slip into a timeless world of dark fantasy and Halloween horror.

Review:

Content Warning: Skeletons and pumpkins who can walk.

Get ready for a gentle scare.

Twelve is an awkward age, especially on Halloween. You’re not a little kid anymore, but you’re not yet old enough for the parties that teenagers or adults sometimes attend that weekend either. I enjoyed the way this short story captured the weirdness of this in-between stage in life and how kids deal with the realization that what worked for them on previous Halloweens maybe isn’t quite what they should be doing this year. It’s not something I’ve seen covered very often in the horror genre, so it was refreshing to find here.

There were times in the plot when certain elements didn’t fit together, and yet the characters accepted all of the twists and turns without a second thought. I wish more time had been spent explaining what the characters were thinking and why no one questioned why their town was suddenly overwhelmed with monsters. Even a simple explanation would have nudged me to bump my rating up half a star or so, and a deeper one would had positively affected my rating even more.

The world building was well done. Obviously, the author didn’t have a lot of space here to go into great detail, but he made good use of every page he did have to work with to ensure that all of his readers knew the basics of what was going on and how this world was different from our own. I was both satisfied with his explanations and curious to know more. That’s a good sign in my opinion, and I will keep an eye out for what the author comes up with next!

This is part of a series, but it can be read as a standalone work.

One Dark Hallow’s Eve was a quick and spooky read.

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October 28, 2021 · 1:00 am

Family Business: A Review of Inheritance 

Inheritance - A Halloween Urban Fantasy Short Story by Zoe Cannon book cover. Image on cover is of a crow sitting on a pumpkin next to a lit candle. There is a bare tree in the background. Title: Inheritance – A Halloween Urban Fantasy Short Story

Author: Zoe Cannon

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 23, 2020

Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 20 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author. 

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Lena’s grandmother defended her small town against the supernatural. So did her mother. Lena should be next in line. But her autism makes that impossible. At least that’s what her mother has always said. Lena couldn’t even get through college—what makes her think she could wield a magical sword and banish the undead?

But now her mother is gone. And Lena’s little sister is in danger. It’s time for Lena to take up the role she was born for… or lose the last of her family forever.

This #ownvoices short story is 6,500 words long, or approximately 20 pages.

Review:

What better way is there to spend Halloween than trying to banish the dead? 

Halloween has many different meanings. In Lena’s case, her understanding of and response to it changed quite a bit over the years. I found it interesting to see how those things evolved as she grew older and was better able to communicate what she did and didn’t like about this holiday. She had excellent reasons for all of ways she reacted on Halloween over the years. 

There were quite a few time jumps in this story, and I occasionally found them confusing. No sooner would I get invested in one particular part of Lena’s life than the plot would suddenly jump to years before or after that event. While I understood why the author wanted to show this character at so many different points in her development, it would have been helpful to have more of these scenes in chronological order so I could understand them a little easier. 

Some of the most memorable scenes were the ones that explored Lena’s complicated relationships with her mother and younger sister. They both struggled to accept Lena’s autism at times, especially when it came to the ways this diagnosis shaped the course of the main character’s life. I liked the fact that this was an Own Voices story and that the characters were given so much time to work through their conflicts. 

Inheritance was a thought-provoking Halloween story that I deeply enjoyed and would recommend to anyone reading this review of it. 

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