Halloween Season

A Fun Short Story Collection

Lucy A. Snyder's Halloween Season is a fun collection of short stories, many of which are set on or around Halloween. The Halloween season means many different things to different people, and this collection provides a nice assortment of tricks and treats which I found mostly delightful. I particularly enjoyed the multiple tales of cosmic horror found in this collection, some with direct allusions to Lovecraft's Mythos. The writing was solid, even if the pacing felt a bit off in a couple of stories or I found myself wanting more from a few. Two of the stories were R-rated, and there were a couple of stories that didn't feel like they really fit into a collection titled Halloween Season, including two about Christmas. Overall I think the general settings and horror elements present throughout most of these works make the book a great choice for spooky season. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4 stars).

More like 4 and a half.
True story: I bought this book back in October to use as Halloween decor because LOOK AT THAT COVER! It's adorable. I kept it on my nightstand and read a story here and there and I finished it today.
I'm sad I'm out of tales.
Each of these stories are so very different from others in the collection that it's hard to review the entire collection as a unit, but one thing most of the stories had in common was that they were detailed and fully-fleshed out. They could be expanded into novels. Porcupine Boy, for example, is set in a world that is so interesting that I can see that being a novel and What Dwells Within had me convinced I was reading an excerpt from an existing urban fantasy series (I stopped reading to look it up), it kind of just dropped you into the action.
My two favorite stories were Visions of the Dream Witch and In The Family. They were worth the price of admission alone.
A Preference for Silence cracked me up.