A review by toastgrl
Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Stories of Horror by Lincoln Michel

3.0

This was a cute and quick read, a fun book of short 'horror stories' that are perfect to read just before bed or with your coffee in the morning. I put apostrophes around 'horror stories' only because a good handful of them fall short of that. Most of these stories had more of an eerie, creepy effect than they did downright scary. I know that you can only do so much with a few pages but even still, some of the scariest stories I've read were very short, and quite a few of these missed that mark. I will admit there were some I even questioned why they were in the book? As they felt nothing close to being a horror story, and there were others that just didn't give the reader enough information or context clues, so the outcome failed at being creepy and just left me confused instead. I don't know if this is a book I would recommend per se, but it would be a fun coffee table conversation. It was also an awesome introduction to a lot of horror authors that probably have some great works out there that I'm going to check out! Of the many stories in this book, here were some I marked as my favorites:

Grimalkin (Andrew F. Sullivan)
Lifeline (J.S. Breukelaar) - loved this one!
Unbeknownst (Matthew Vollmer)
Candy Boii (Sam J. Miller)
The Story and the Seed (Amber Sparks)
Fingers (Rachel Heng)
Carbon Footprint (Shelly Oria)
The Mask, the Ride, the Bag (Chase Burke)
Leg (Brian Evenson)
Caravan (Pedro Iniguez) - loved this one too!
Human Milk for Human Babies (Lindsay King-Miller)
Instrument of the Ancestors (Troy L. Wiggins)