Book reviews are always the most shameful part of my site as I am notoriously slow at getting around to reading them. The Perfectly Fine Neighbourhood is a horror anthology featuring stories written by fifteen different authors. I was sent a copy last December, so it has taken me an entire year to get around to reading it. As I always say, every good anthology needs a good theme, and the theme for this one is more involved than most. The goal with this anthology was to have a collection of horror stories based in a world where ghosts are common place. I admit that I thought this was a bit of a lame idea, but egg on my face as I really enjoyed the stories contained within this, and was impressed how they share common ideas despite being written by a variety of people.
It begins with 'The First Ghost' by Stephen Kozeniewski (The Thing Under Your Bed) which sets out the idea of a ghost filled world. Here, a couple have rented out a remote cottage, with it promising to be entirely ghost free, but it turns out that something maybe even worse than a ghost is residing there. In this ghost filled world death is not seen as much of a burden as it normally is. Most people who die return as ghosts and so couples are no longer separated by death and death looses some of its finality. This leads to situations such as with Jeff Strand's 'A Most Unpleasant Task' and Ryan Breadinc's 'The Perfectly Fine Family', both comedic stories in which the dead are trying to speed up the process of their loved ones lives ending. Then there is the interesting 'Incorporeal Tax' by Annie Knox, about a partner being trapped with his abusive boyfriend even after that boyfriend has passed. On the flip side, there are some stories here played super seriously with Candace Nola's 'Click' being the most morose and straight one, in which her protagonist character attempts to let her newly deceased brother come to terms with his suicide.
There was a good variety of stories from more grounded tales to action pieces that were a thrill to read. My personal favourite was 'Auld Lang Syne' from Wile E. Young that sees the perpetrator of an office massacre returning to the scene of his crime in order to destroy the ghosts of the people he originally murdered. Another similar one handled different was Shane Burnham's 'Addicted to Slaughter' that sees a serial killer forced to live with the ghosts of the people he killed. Killers feature in a bunch of these, I thought 'Playthings' by Lay Hanifen was memorable (a ghost trying to save a woman from a serial killer), while D.C Hill's 'The Perfectly Fine Storm' with echoes of The Purge to it, and 'Fiduciary Duty' by Zachary Rosenberg both had satisfying stories about ghosts getting their deserved revenge on the living.
There was a good feeling of unity with elements appearing in different stories that made them mostly feel like they were taking place in the same world. There are some contrasts, Brian Keene's (The Lost Level) 'Where the Heart Is' sets out the idea that ghosts are doomed to haunt the areas they died, while most other stories allows ghosts seemingly to travel wherever they like such as with Gavin Dillinger's 'Lay, Lie, Lie'. I liked all the ideas presented here though, such as how ghosts are able to be witnesses to their own deaths. The anthology ends with Kayleigh Dobbs (The End) 'The Last Word' that takes the form of a letter a convicted murderer has written about the life-long rivalry with her twin sister which led to her eventual imprisonment.
I was weirdly ambivalent to the concept for this anthology, but the book proved me wrong. There are some stories here that felt a bit similar, or a bit basic in their execution, but the quality was strong throughout. Everything from comedic to tragic and action packed, I liked how the stories mostly felt like they were taking place all within the same world. The Perfectly Fine Neighbourhood was a good one, not a bad story to be found, and all of them were well written.
SCORE:
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