This was my first experience reading Burke, but it won't be my last. The shorter stories among these were my favorites, but even the longer ones packed in such fantastic characters and atmosphere, I couldn't put them down. It was also refreshing to read such a clearly themed single-author collection that never managed to get repetitive or settle for too long in a single theme or emotion. Instead, each new story felt like a newly built world, and many of them kept me guessing till the end.

If there's any criticism, it might be that I simply would have liked the collection to be longer, but that's a small thing. I'll look forward to reading more of Burke's work in the future. ( )

The weather here in the northeast right now is making it feel like we're still in the dead of winter. Going through the stack of books in my TBR, this title stood out like a sore thumb and here we are.

This collection centers around winter horror. Those short days when, after the snow has fallen, it's eerily quiet...sound has been dampened, and there's an illuminating glow from that snow after the sun goes down. Just enough of a glow to make shadows where there were none before. But, I ramble.

All of these stories were enjoyable but I especially loved DOOMSDAY FATHER CHRISTMAS. (To be honest, I really can't stand Christmas, so I agreed with Santa's feelings about it. Well, mostly.)

VISITATION RIGHTS was another special story that might not have worked in the hands of a lesser author.

Make no mistake, this book is dark. Grief and guilt are Kealan Patrick Burke's forte, he writes about them like no one else. These emotions are woven into his words, but the reader doesn't always know it at the time. It's when the story is over that it hits you like a freight train, or a bullet between the eyes.

Thankfully, I have a few of Mr. Burke's other books in my to be read stack. I am rationing them because I don't want to run out. It's great to have an author you know you can count on for entertaining stories.

Recommended!

You can get your copy here: https://amzn.to/2VO8len

*I bought this book with my hard earned cash.* ( )

This review can also be found on my blog.

This was my first time reading Kealan Patrick Burke and in all honesty, I was pretty disappointed. This collection had an average of 4.2 on Goodreads, so I was expecting something rather spectacular. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it certainly fell short of what I was hoping for. This is a rather short book (only 96 pages!) containing 7 short stories. I think that part of the issue for me is that it’s difficult to fully develop a story in so few pages. Some stories did remarkably well considering their length, but others just didn’t do much for me.

My ratings for each story are as follows:

Snowmen 3.5/5
Doomsday Father Christmas 2/5
Black Static 2/5
Visitation Rights 4/5
Home 4.5/5
The Quiet 3/5
They Know 4/5

Which comes to an average of 3.29. Like I said, not a bad rating by any means. My favorites, as you can probably tell, were Visitation Rights, Home, and They Know. In particular, Home went in a direction I wasn’t expecting and really hit me in the gut, as did Visitation Rights. They Know was the longest story in the collection and its length allowed for a lot more development of the story and the characters. A couple of the stories have tugged at the back of my brain in the couple days since I’ve finished the book, which I always take to be a good sign as well.

I have to wonder if this was just a poor introduction to Burke’s work for me, and think that may be the case. When I love short story collections, I really love them, but others can fall flat easily. This unfortunately settled into the latter category. I had a similar reaction to Paul Tremblay’s book of short stories recently, but I love his novels from what I’ve read. So I’ll definitely be picking up more of Burke’s work, even if this set of stories didn’t work very well for me personally.

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