3 out of 4 stars
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Carlotta G. Holton’s Grave Matters is a collection of short stories that offers tales of superstition, suspense, and a little bit of horror. These tales span time and location to give the reader a wide variety of stories. One story may be the tale of revenge, while the next may be a ghost story. What are you afraid of? Whether it is puppets, ghosts, werewolves, or something of the human nature, more than likely this book has it! With Fall arriving soon and Halloween around the corner, this would be a fun book to pick up.
Typically when I read a collection of short stories, I find that I don’t like all of the stories in the collection. This is not the case with Grave Matters. All 24 stories are enjoyable. Some of these read as though they are fables, while others are told very much in the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe. I really enjoyed the variety that was provided. Each story also begins with a quote about superstition, which I thought was a great introduction to each chapter.
The first story in the collection was “Saving Face”. This story about revenge takes place at a masquerade ball in Venice. Although this story is set in contemporary times, it has a very classic feel to it. I felt as though this was a great choice for the first story of the book, it was interesting, grabbed my attention, and made me want to read more.
Grave Matters was written very well, but there were some formatting issues throughout the book. Sometimes the alignment and spacing would change throughout the reading. During one of the stories “Scorpio’s Setting” the sentences ran off of the page. During another story “The Haunted Steed” there is a misplaced sentence that just stopped in the middle of the paragraph. When I looked a few lines above the paragraph, I found that this was a line from earlier in the story. There were also sections in which the font size changed. This sometimes made it difficult to read.
Although it could be easy to binge read all of the stories in Grave Matters and finish the book in an afternoon, it is also easy to pick up and read for a few minutes at a time. Each of the stories are only a few pages long, so one can easily read a little at a time. I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys a good creepy tale. Although some of the stories are creepy, it is not overly scary. If not for the formatting issues I would give this book a perfect score. Because of the formatting, though, I give Grave Matters 3 out of 4 stars.
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Grave Matters
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