Shaykitteh's World of Books

I selected Ten Short Tales About Ghosts by K.C. Parton since this is a new book (it was published in June 2014) so I was hoping for some new stories that I hadn't read or heard before. I was pleasantly surprised that the specific stories in this collection were all new to me... some of the themes are re-used, but that's normal in ghost stories.

"The Last Train" - Story Two - this was a neat tale about passing into death. The train idea has been done before, but this was the best rendition of it that I have read.

"The Door" - Story Seven - this was the first story that actually gave me goosebumps. Maybe it's that I've been there, late at night working on projects alone in the dark, but I could feel myself there in the story.

"The Reader" - Story Eight - this one gave me the creeps and will make me think twice about going into old historic churches.

"Uncle Tom's Ghost Story" - Story Nine - this one was a fun and creepy story. I could see how being there would be horrifying, but I view this one as just a neat and different ghost story.  I'm happy with something a little different even if if didn't scare me.

The rest of the stories weren't anything special to me. I suppose that out of a Ten Story collection, the fact that I enjoyed four of the ten stories is a pretty good percentage. I didn't dislike any of stories, there were just some that seemed a little more formulaic (such as: We have to have a ghost story about someone who died at work, or: We have to have a ghost story about WWII) and while I don't think that those stories added to the collection, I don't think they detracted for it.  They were just more expected.

However, Story Eleven... yes, I said Story Eleven. In a book titled Ten Short Tales About Ghosts - I'm sorry, but I had to knock the author down a half star for the inability to count. I was leaning toward making this a 4 1/2 star review, but when I reached the Eleventh Chapter, expecting acknowledgements or links to other work the author had done, and actually started reading a story about the Devil in poem format... I just stopped. I hate to nitpick, but the title is TEN stories. Not ELEVEN. Not just "Short Tales About Ghosts" but specifically "Ten Short Tales About Ghosts." For some reason this is annoying me more than it should. But the only thing that I can go back to is "Quality is better than Quantity. If the author had only written Ten stories and put all of his/her effort into those ten stories, than perhaps this would have been a Five Star review. But I found the poem to be a lackluster ending to a collection that shouldn't have even been added in the first place.  However, that is my opinion, so you are free to make your own.

NOTE:  I received this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

If you enjoyed my review, I would appreciate if you could mark it as being helpful on Amazon as well, as this is useful to both the reviewer and the author. I have included the link to the Amazon review in the Source section at the bottom of this review. I also highly recommend that you pick up the kindle edition of Ten "Eleven" Short Tales About Ghosts for $4.99 by going to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L5K14KY/?tag=shasworofboo-20.