Review: You Will Grow into Them by Malcolm Devlin

You Will Grow into Them by Malcolm Devlin

My Rating:

I would like to thank Unsung Stories for providing me with an advanced reading copy of this book.

The world is a far stranger place than we give it credit for. There, in the things we think familiar, safe, are certain aspects. Our fears and desires given form. Moments that defy explanation. Shadows in our home.

In Malcolm Devlin’s debut collection, change is the only constant. Across ten stories he tackles the unease of transformation, growth and change in a world where horror seeps from the everyday. Childhood anxieties manifest as debased and degraded doppelgängers, fungal blooms are harvested from the backs of dancers and London lycanthropes become the new social pariahs. The demons we carry inside us are very real indeed, but You Will Grow Into Them.

'You Will Grow into Them' is a solid selection of short stories. The stories are varied and different and have a dark unsettling undercurrent. The author's writing style is engaging and draws the reader in, he manages to give the reader just enough information to get the story across while at the same time leaving room for the reader's imagination. This allows the reader to fill in the gaps and to embrace the strangeness and fantastical and let their imagination run with it.

While I didn't find them to be scary, I did enjoy the strangeness and unsettling feel of them. They made me think, had me reading between the lines and contemplating the effect and affect, and the reasoning behind what was taking place. I can't say I was a fan of every story in the collection, some stood out more than others. My two favourites in the collection were 'Her First Harvest' and 'We All Need Somewhere to Hide'.

As a whole, I would say that 'You Will Grow into Them' is a 4 star read. I did, however, rate each story individually as I read through the collection and you can find those ratings below:

1 - Passion Play - 3 stars.

2 - Two Brothers - 3 stars.

3 - Breadcrumbs - 4 stars.

4 - Her First Harvest - 4.5 stars.

5 - We All Need Somewhere to Hide - 5 stars.

6 - Dogsbody - 3.5 stars.

7 - Songs Like They Used to Play - 2 stars.

8 - The Last Meal He Ate Before She Killed Him - 2 stars.

9 - The Bridge - 3 stars.

10 The End of Hope Street - 4 stars.



Reviews also posted to my blog: Scarlet's Web
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