Strange Folk You’ll Never Meet is a short story collection filled with dark, twisted versions of fairy and folktales. It is not for the faint of heart. Some content warnings that apply to multiple stories include: gore and descriptive body horror.
I guess technically you could say these are horror stories. (Genres are confusing.) Many of them are a flash in the pan—here and gone in the blink of an eye. They leave you baffled, wondering what the heck just happened. What’s great is that they don’t linger. A story is finished when it’s finished, whether it takes one page or many.
I won’t go through every single story because there are a lot, but I will say I enjoyed nearly every single one. The final one didn’t do much for me, though. A girl who is scared of her orthodontist plans an escape from her surroundings. The story itself was alright; it just didn’t feel like it connected with the others in the collection much. That is to say, I didn’t find there to be a “wow” moment like in all the others.
This collection does a fantastic job of being cohesive without being repetitive. Of course your mileage may vary. For me there were enough variations and differences throughout that made each story stand out. What they had in common was usually some sort of eerie, almost uncanny valley setting or atmosphere with a macabre twist somewhere in the story—whether in plot, setting, or character. Also, here was also usually a moment that moment that made me go, “Did…did that just happen?!”
This collection grips you with teeth so sharp you don’t realize it’s ensnared you. It’s disturbing, macabre, and all around strange. And I mean that in the best way possible.
