Never Whistle at Night

I picked up this book because I've seen it in multiple bookshops and the cover art is beautiful. I checked Goodreads and the reviews seemed generally positive so I figured why not?

The first story (Kushtuka) was alright. It didn't really feel that scary to me at all, something about the pacing (rushed) and the plainly good or evil characters didn't work at all for me. That being said, this story invoked Indian mythology in an interesting way, so I figured I'd keep going.

The second story (White Hills) was awful. I don't even know what it was trying to get at really, and it felt like there was no real message there at all. Just sorta violence for the sake of violence. Similar to the first story, the characters were cartoonishly evil or naive. No nuance really.

The third story (something about teeth) was what made me DNF. Unlike the more interesting first one, this one runs way too long and has numerous uncomfortable scenes that don't add much at all to the narrative. There's a gay theme that I didn't understand, which felt like a distraction from the narrative rather than a well-thought addition. Again this story wasn't scary, it was just sort of uncomfortable and weird.

After batting less than 1/3, I gave up. Maybe I'll read individual stories that other reviewers here liked, but I'm not convinced I'll like them much either.