A boy is kidnapped and locked in a prison cell of a basement, but a boxy black phone is weirdly hanging on the wall. The basis for the recent movie of the same name. There wasn’t much plot here, but it didn’t need one. I just wanted to give Homer and his dad both a big hug and a safe space to be who they are and love the games they love. This was another story that made me sad, even though it wasn’t necessarily a sad story. Just a boy and his dad bonding over baseball, in spite of the defects plaguing them both. Because the darkest monsters are always fully human. I actually liked the undercurrent of the story, an older brother trying to protect the younger from their abusive father, than I did the vampire hunting angle. It demonstrates that even those viewed as heroes often harbor dark secrets, and can be villains behind closed doors. This is a loose Dracula sequel, following Abraham Van Helsing’s sons, Max and Rudy. But it was like a train wreck I couldn’t look away. It was definitely horror, but not the kind I prefer. The main character’s excitement over the transformation was uncomfortable. Love how evocative of Kafka this is from the first line. It’s The Metamorphosis, but with a willing participant. But I became very taken by the friendship at the story’s core, as well as seeing Art try to navigate life in a world that is so potentially deadly for him. This was such a weird concept that it took my brain a few pages to come to terms with Art not being imaginary. The pacing was a tad off, and the telling itself was uneven and occasionally difficult to follow, but I really liked the feel.Ī boy’s childhood best friend is inflatable. I love the idea that those who are literally haunted by their pasts came together not to exorcize it, but to honor it. The melancholy air makes the entire story. This was a dark one, that would make a great movie.Ī theater is haunted, but the ghost in question just wants to talk about movies. I love how the ending of the story mirrored in tone and inevitability the story that our main character was so infatuated with. Below are micro-reviews of each story.Īn editor falls in love with a very dark story by an even more mysterious author, and becomes obsessed with finding him.

In a collection of 15 stories, I’d say that’s a pretty fantastic achievement.

That being said, I really enjoyed my time with this collection, and there wasn’t a single story that I legitimately hated. It was more even across the board, but that meant that there were fewer that stood out to me. However, I also found the individual stories largely less memorable. As a whole, I think it might be a touch stronger than Full Throttle, a more recent short story collection of his I read in 2019. 20th Century Ghosts is not the first short story collection I’ve read by Hill, but it’s the first one he released.

Twentieth century ghosts