A review by fernfuentes
My Sister April by Kyra R. Torres

4.0

Okay, so here’s my biggest problem with Kyra’s debut short story. It’s a little TOO short. There’s a few open ended questions throughout the story that I feel could have been answered if she’d just made it a little longer. Like for instance, she’s playing with her cell phone, why not try to call her dad when she heard the fighting? I’m not sure why it’s so short, if she was working with a word limit or just trying something akin to Flash Fiction. But the story could’ve done with a little better pacing.

The opening pretty much took the suspense of it out for me. As a horror story, there are much darker, gloomier ways to begin it without giving away the ending in the first sentences. I want to be shocked when I reach the ending of a scary story. That was taken from me with this one. But still, I really enjoyed the story as a whole. In reality, me wanting it to be longer is a good thing, because I really wanted to learn more about April and Lace. I wanted to know more about this farm and its history. I loved the subject matter and the back and forth between the sisters. I think with a few more drafts this story could’ve been a killer debut. That being said I’m looking forward to the rest of the stories in the collection! Great work, Kyra.