Review of 'Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances' by Neil Gaiman

I have a confession to make: I am now someone who watches things and then goes about reading the book. Pretty monstrous, I know. I watched the TV series of Good Omens last year and absolutely adored it (I need a series 2 asap), and then pretty much immediately picked this off my shelf to read. I'm not the biggest fan of short stories so at some point I'm hoping to get my hands on a full length novel of his (what would you recommend??), but I enjoyed this nonetheless.

This is a collection of creepy, supernatural short stories interspersed with equally creepy poems. From retellings of fairy tales made scary to tales exposing our deepest fears, this really was a stellar volume of short stories. The poems were well thought out, and a very welcome break from stories that could become a little tiring - I find with short story books that if each story is written in a similar way it becomes quite a drag.

One of my favourite stories was 'A Calendar of Tales', which had a story for each month of the year based around 12 tweets that Gaiman had been sent. It really was a clever read full of fantasy and really vivid stories. The only thing I can compare it to is it being like a more grown up version of the Goosebumps books I read as a kid.  Which, as a sidenote, were one of the most memorable and terrifying things I read, and I'd love to see if they lived up to my memory of them!

This is the best short story collection I've ever read before, and really makes me want to read his other books. I gave this 4 stars.

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Review of "The Bitch Goddess Notebook"

It's taken me a long time to decide exactly what to say about this book due to the deep connection I felt to it that almost made me feel utterly reviled (note: I included the above quotation to show you guys how disturbing and saddening the text could be at times, rather than feeling any specific connection to that). If there's anything I'm going to say that is definite about it, it's that it should come with a big fat trigger warning regarding it's content surrounding self-harm. As someone who's seriously suffered with this in the past, I can understand how influential any type of media can be regarding the subject, and the intense description of cutting oneself which the book narrates, as well as praises from the perspectives of the characters narrating the text is a little, well, disturbing. So, although I loved the writing and the plot was very eye-opening, I feel like that needed to be said, as a reader in a more fragile state of recovery may have suffered as a result of this writing.

Meet Rennie, Amy and Cherry: an unlikely trio of best friends at high school. Despite their differences, they couldn't image not being in each others' lives - after all, they have no secrets, right? Girls who stick together, stay together, but words aren't enough to prove a bond, and one night, high on a concoction of goodies, the three form a blood bond, leading to rumours about satanic worship. 

But how long to high-scool friendships last anyway? Interspersed with a narrative from all three girls about their time at school are sections from later on in life, where actions have consequences, and you don't always have your bitch posse to back you up.

Track the tales of troubled teens into their adult lives, and discover what it feels like to be an addict - to drugs, to self-harm, to sex, to drink: how do you recover when it's all you've ever known?

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x