The Neurospicy Bean

  I feel kind of betrayed by this book. I mean, there is SO MUCH POTENTIAL here, right? There’s nothing I love more than a good wintery horror story when I’m home for winter break (yes I read this book six months ago it’s fine), and this anthology is just packed with talent. So it should have been absolutely amazing. And yet it was just…meh? I’d go through them one by one, but only a couple have actually stuck in my head enough to really comment. “The Mawkin Field” was really interesting and built a real sense of dread throughout the story, but then it just…ended without really getting anywhere.  In fact, that was probably my main problem with most of these stories. They had interesting ideas for the most part, but almost none of them really had any grip to them, and the endings were mostly confusing instead of scary. The one that I think was the strongest was “The Lord of Misrule.” It was creepy and disturbing, and the ending was actually comprehensible, which, you know, is k...

  This was…not good. Let me first say: how on earth does a town as small as Cameron describes this one as being support not just this mall but apparently enough people to make a random elf competition go viral?? I mean, I guess it happens, but it felt really weird. But that’s not the most annoying thing about this book, by far. Cameron as a character was just so irritating. He was mean to everyone, especially Marco, for no reason. There was literally zero chemistry between Cameron and Marco. Cameron spent way more time thinking about his ex than he spent thinking about Marco, and they just seemed annoyed at each other the entire book until suddenly Cameron decided he liked this guy enough to question all his life plans for him.  Also. THE BOOK MISGENDERS THE NON-BINARY CHARACTER. How does this happen. How does it not get caught in all the many phases of editing a book must go through. Were there not sensitivity readers. Did none of the early readers notice. I mean, I had to go...