christina_34's review against another edition
3.0
Not a bad book. The stories were a little different from the other "From Hell" books.
Sleeping with the Spirit **1/2
Ghost romance. Girl sees in her dreams a boy and obviously he haunts her house asking for her help, so he can move on. Predictable plot and a sad ending.
Stupid Perfect World **1/2
Futuristic. I don't read futuristic stories so this was something new for me. For a lesson the students have to choose something the old people did, so the girl chooses to stop her hormonal balance and be a proper teenager and the boy chooses to sleep. Dreams follow and then love. The characters were with no depth but the story was something fresh.
Thinner Than Water ***1/2
I liked this story. It seemed a little bit with celtic myth, with fey leaving babies for the people with green eyes and amazing skills. The girl wants to leave from her village but her parents won't let her, so she "marries" a guy from the village for one year but the parents don't approve. So after some time half the village come and kill him. A sad but nice story.
Fan Fictions **
In the beginning it looks like Twilight. He is the only guy that ever noticed her but she can't tell anyone that they're together. Afterwards we learn he was born on 187- and in the very end we'll never know if he really existed.
Love Struck ***
Selkies!Nice turn with the mythology. A little bit with family drama, some denial and in the end love. I didn't like Alana very much, but Murrin was cute.
Sleeping with the Spirit **1/2
Ghost romance. Girl sees in her dreams a boy and obviously he haunts her house asking for her help, so he can move on. Predictable plot and a sad ending.
Stupid Perfect World **1/2
Futuristic. I don't read futuristic stories so this was something new for me. For a lesson the students have to choose something the old people did, so the girl chooses to stop her hormonal balance and be a proper teenager and the boy chooses to sleep. Dreams follow and then love. The characters were with no depth but the story was something fresh.
Thinner Than Water ***1/2
I liked this story. It seemed a little bit with celtic myth, with fey leaving babies for the people with green eyes and amazing skills. The girl wants to leave from her village but her parents won't let her, so she "marries" a guy from the village for one year but the parents don't approve. So after some time half the village come and kill him. A sad but nice story.
Fan Fictions **
In the beginning it looks like Twilight. He is the only guy that ever noticed her but she can't tell anyone that they're together. Afterwards we learn he was born on 187- and in the very end we'll never know if he really existed.
Love Struck ***
Selkies!Nice turn with the mythology. A little bit with family drama, some denial and in the end love. I didn't like Alana very much, but Murrin was cute.
somewheregirl7's review against another edition
2.0
I ran out and bought this anthology the moment it came out when I found out there was a Scott Westerfeld story in it. I'm also a fan of Melissa Marr and Justine Larbalestier isn't a bad author either so it seemed like a good investment.
On the contrary, this is one of the more disappointing and weaker anthologies I've read. I wouldn't purchase it if given the chance to go back in time. Below is a review of each story, none of which were the best examples of their authors' work.
Sleeping With the Spirit by Laurie Faria Stolarz
I've never read this author's work before. She writes well with tight prose, good description and a reasonable pace. The overall story is nothing that stands out - a tale about a girl who falls in love with a ghost. The characters were interesting, but not memorable and the tale was enjoyable but forgettable.
Stupid Perfect World by Scott Westerfeld
At first I couldn't tell if the protagonist was male or female. As with much of Westerfeld's work he does a good job on world building, dumping us into a future reality where all the ills of humanity have been solved and school students are forced to tastoke a class to learn about things like plagues, war, hunger and such. For their final project each student must select one of those long-forgotten ills to experience personally. The protagonist, Keiran, chooses to experience sleep. His friend Maria chooses normal teenage hormones. This is a character study more than anything else and charming and light - like cotton candy. It lacks some of the depth of Westerfeld's other work but was still fun. Overall the best story in the anthology.
Thinner Than Water by Justine Larbaleister
At first this story started out very interesting. It's about a girl raised in a tourist town that reenacts life in Miedeval Europe and her parents are so into this that they have no technology and really do live every moment of their lives in their bakery as though it was several hundred years ago. The teenagers in the town are married very young, as they would have done in the past. The townspeople are also very superstitious about faeries and such. The main characer, Jean, falls in love with a boy ostracized by the town as having Faerie blood, Robbie, and pledges to marry him. At sixteen the girl is married. The story goes downhill fast. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS don't read further unless you want to know what happens. The villagers kill Robbie. They murder him and there isn't any consequence at all! Nothing. Further he comes back and the two teenagers make love, and the main character ends up pregnant by her dead faerie husband at 16. Larbaleister seems obsessed with glamorizing teenage pregnancy because this is the second story of hers I've read where a young girl ends up pregnant. I wouldn't be opposed to that if it was not glamorized, if the harsher realities of teenage pregnancy were shown, but they are not. It's disturbing and poorly handled.
Fan Fictions by Gabrielle Zevin
This has to be one of the most confusing stories I've ever read. Zevin uses an unreliable narrator and tries to make the user question the story by twisting it on its head at the end. Somehow it falls short however and what is left is just a strange bit of nonsensical story telling that has promise but never quite delivers on it.
Love Struck by Melissa Marr
Marr's two novels were very strong and well written with vivid characters and prose. I think she needs the longer format a novel offers. Her short story started out with an intriguing premise but just felt flat overall and too one-dimensional. The bones of the story are there but it is missing the heart. Perhaps with another couple chapters and a bit more conflict, this would have made a good story, but it is currently unsatisfying and not at all up to Marr's usual work.
On the contrary, this is one of the more disappointing and weaker anthologies I've read. I wouldn't purchase it if given the chance to go back in time. Below is a review of each story, none of which were the best examples of their authors' work.
Sleeping With the Spirit by Laurie Faria Stolarz
I've never read this author's work before. She writes well with tight prose, good description and a reasonable pace. The overall story is nothing that stands out - a tale about a girl who falls in love with a ghost. The characters were interesting, but not memorable and the tale was enjoyable but forgettable.
Stupid Perfect World by Scott Westerfeld
At first I couldn't tell if the protagonist was male or female. As with much of Westerfeld's work he does a good job on world building, dumping us into a future reality where all the ills of humanity have been solved and school students are forced to tastoke a class to learn about things like plagues, war, hunger and such. For their final project each student must select one of those long-forgotten ills to experience personally. The protagonist, Keiran, chooses to experience sleep. His friend Maria chooses normal teenage hormones. This is a character study more than anything else and charming and light - like cotton candy. It lacks some of the depth of Westerfeld's other work but was still fun. Overall the best story in the anthology.
Thinner Than Water by Justine Larbaleister
At first this story started out very interesting. It's about a girl raised in a tourist town that reenacts life in Miedeval Europe and her parents are so into this that they have no technology and really do live every moment of their lives in their bakery as though it was several hundred years ago. The teenagers in the town are married very young, as they would have done in the past. The townspeople are also very superstitious about faeries and such. The main characer, Jean, falls in love with a boy ostracized by the town as having Faerie blood, Robbie, and pledges to marry him. At sixteen the girl is married. The story goes downhill fast. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS don't read further unless you want to know what happens. The villagers kill Robbie. They murder him and there isn't any consequence at all! Nothing. Further he comes back and the two teenagers make love, and the main character ends up pregnant by her dead faerie husband at 16. Larbaleister seems obsessed with glamorizing teenage pregnancy because this is the second story of hers I've read where a young girl ends up pregnant. I wouldn't be opposed to that if it was not glamorized, if the harsher realities of teenage pregnancy were shown, but they are not. It's disturbing and poorly handled.
Fan Fictions by Gabrielle Zevin
This has to be one of the most confusing stories I've ever read. Zevin uses an unreliable narrator and tries to make the user question the story by twisting it on its head at the end. Somehow it falls short however and what is left is just a strange bit of nonsensical story telling that has promise but never quite delivers on it.
Love Struck by Melissa Marr
Marr's two novels were very strong and well written with vivid characters and prose. I think she needs the longer format a novel offers. Her short story started out with an intriguing premise but just felt flat overall and too one-dimensional. The bones of the story are there but it is missing the heart. Perhaps with another couple chapters and a bit more conflict, this would have made a good story, but it is currently unsatisfying and not at all up to Marr's usual work.
philyra91's review against another edition
4.0
Absolutely amazing is all I can say! I truly enjoyed each and every one of the stories in this compilation! :) I do have a question about the title though. Why "Love Is Hell"? It makes me want to think that all the love stories in the book are bad ones, like abusive ones or something equally hideous. I mean, all, if not most, of the stories have somewhat happy endings. The rest have bittersweet endings, which in my opinion, are good endings sometimes. I suppose "Love Is Hell" just takes to mean that love can be a painful journey, as one of the story MOST DEFINITELY illustrates.
But enough about me harping on the title. The stories here, assembling some of the most awesome writers in the YA genre at the moment, are nothing short of spectacular, in my opinion. The only sad thing is that because it's a compilation, all 5 stories are novellas at best, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. If you want a quick read, this is PERFECT. But at the same thing, at the end of it all, you'd yearn for more. Trust me.
Definitely a great read. I recommend it to all! :D
But enough about me harping on the title. The stories here, assembling some of the most awesome writers in the YA genre at the moment, are nothing short of spectacular, in my opinion. The only sad thing is that because it's a compilation, all 5 stories are novellas at best, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. If you want a quick read, this is PERFECT. But at the same thing, at the end of it all, you'd yearn for more. Trust me.
Definitely a great read. I recommend it to all! :D
heyshay07's review against another edition
4.0
Scott Westerfeld and Melissa Marr had the best stories in this collection. It made me wish they were full length books instead of short stories. Justine Larbalestier also had a great story that was perfect for the book. I wasn't a fan of the other two author's stories. Overall, it was a good book too read but I wouldn't buy it full price. Check it out from the library! Support them!
nico's review against another edition
4.0
All the stories in this anthology were awesome! Justine Larbalestier's short was heartbreaking and Scott Westerfeld created a fantastic, interesting world with his. I wish both of these had been expanded into full-length novels! I would have pre-ordered them the second they hit Amazon.
thorn's review against another edition
4.0
All the stories in this anthology were awesome! Justine Larbalestier's short was heartbreaking and Scott Westerfeld created a fantastic, interesting world with his. I wish both of these had been expanded into full-length novels! I would have pre-ordered them the second they hit Amazon.
melodypowers65's review against another edition
3.0
This was a pretty good anthology of short stories. They were all fantasy, but not overly 'supernatural' or 'paranormal'.
My two favourites were Justine Larbalestier's 'Thinner Than Water' and Melissa Marr's 'Love Struck' and they were both fey oriented, which was so refreshing to see in todays seemingly vampire-and-other-supernatural/paranormal-being dominated market.
Scott Westerfeld's 'Stupid Perfect World' was set in a very similar world to his Uglies series (I don't *think* it was the same one, but it could have been, they were that similar!) and was interesting.
Laurie Faria Stolarz's 'Sleeping with the Spirit' and Gabrielle Zevin's 'Fan Fictions' were more on the paranormal spectrum, but I thought both were well done. The concept for 'Fan Fictions' and the style it was written in were especially intriguing.
I debated giving the anthology 4 stars, but since it's really only Larbalestier and Marr's stories that I felt warranted 4 stars, I thought 3 stars was a better overall score.
My two favourites were Justine Larbalestier's 'Thinner Than Water' and Melissa Marr's 'Love Struck' and they were both fey oriented, which was so refreshing to see in todays seemingly vampire-and-other-supernatural/paranormal-being dominated market.
Scott Westerfeld's 'Stupid Perfect World' was set in a very similar world to his Uglies series (I don't *think* it was the same one, but it could have been, they were that similar!) and was interesting.
Laurie Faria Stolarz's 'Sleeping with the Spirit' and Gabrielle Zevin's 'Fan Fictions' were more on the paranormal spectrum, but I thought both were well done. The concept for 'Fan Fictions' and the style it was written in were especially intriguing.
I debated giving the anthology 4 stars, but since it's really only Larbalestier and Marr's stories that I felt warranted 4 stars, I thought 3 stars was a better overall score.
breenakm's review against another edition
4.0
So the title made me hesitate to read this book but I like the other books by Mellissa Marr and wanted to read her part in this book. Her story was my favorite of the five. It has a very good ending. Scott Westerfield's was thought provoking. After all the convieniences we enjoy to we really appreciate what we have? Does it take a "Scarcity class" to point out what we have that our ancestors didn't and visa versa? Can we go to far in our technology advancement? What is to far? Anything that excludes agency and God.
I enjoyed all the stories.
I enjoyed all the stories.
wackly93's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.25
Content Warnings
Minor: Mental illness
sassime713's review against another edition
3.0
Not exactly what in was expecting. 4 out of 5 authors I've read before and I know mushy happy endings aren't quite their style but only two happy endings out of five? Kind of depressing. And I wouldn't quite call these paranormal.. Out of the ordinary, and maybe even a few dipping into the occult- but paranormal to me is ghosts, ghouls and exorcisms. Only one ghost story.