Review: Beautiful and Disturbing
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 18, 2012
Ok.... There are now two authors who made me cry over a flower:H.C. Anderson and Merrie Destefano!Seriously:This collection of short stories is absolutely wonderful.Destefano's writing is beautiful and poetic and fit the almost dreamlike stories in this collection perfectly.The stories range from touching to creepy and from beautiful to disturbing.The first couple of stories are short stories: rounded and complete. In the Garden and Waiting for Midnight were my favorites of these stories. In the Garden is a bittersweet story about a garden and it's this story that had me crying over a flower.Then there are a two stories told in three acts. Charlie Brown Doesn't Live Here Anymore was my favorite here: it was both a funny and a sad tale about coyotes and dogs.Lastly there were the Flash Fiction stories: short moments frozen in time. These were wonderful. Some were just perfect as they are, others were screaming to be expanded into longer stories, but all of them were powerful and so vividly described that even when the subject was far from mundane it felt real and alive.The beautiful writing and the strong emotions in these short stories make sure I will reread this collection often and I'm hoping Destefano will decide to write more short stories (next to her full length novels of course).(I received this book from the author for review. This didn't influence my opinion)