Review: Halloween Season by Lucy A. Snyder

Halloween never ends around here!

Halloween Season by Lucy A. Snyder

Published October 2020

Dark Fiction  |  Goodreads  |  Amazon 

Source: Received for Review Consideration 

Halloween is the most wonderful part of the year for many of us. For dedicated fans, the season begins when the leaves start turning autumn colors and doesn't finish until Hallowtide ends in November. With it comes a whole lot of fun: scary movies and stories, haunted houses, seasonal sweets, spooky decorations, costume parties, and of course trick or treat. But Halloween is also a deeply spiritual time for some; it's an opportunity to remember and honor loved ones who have passed on.

Master storyteller Lucy A. Snyder has filled her cauldron with everything that Halloween means to her and distilled it into a spell-binding volume of stories. Within these pages you'll find thrills and chills, hilarity and horrors, the sweet and the naughty.

One of the best things about Halloween is you don't have to be yourself. So go ahead and try on a new mask or two... you may discover hidden talents as a witch, a pirate, a space voyager, a zombie fighter, or even an elf. This is the perfect collection to celebrate the season of the dead or to summon those heady autumn vibes whenever you like. You may even find a couple of tales that evoke a certain winter holiday that keeps trying to crowd in on the fun.

In the worlds within this book, every day is Halloween! 

My 2 Cents For Free!

Halloween Season is an eclectic collection of short stories and a poem or two. The stories aren’t all focused on or around Halloween which I found a little bit odd but they’re all interesting and some are darkly comical (my favorite) so they’re definitely worth a read any time of the year!

I’m going to focus on the stories I liked best because my reviews for collections and anthologies are often as long as a damn book and no one has time for that. And also I am lazy. I’m not going to rate each story either so you’re forced to read my words if you want to know more. Sorry in advance, haha!

Beggars’ Night is a dark poem about little demons.🖤 it!

Hazelnuts and Yummy Mummies This was a wacked out way to start the collection. It’s Halloween and a writer is hand selling her books at a convention table. She eats a cookie that has been laced with a hallucinogenic (uh oh!) and revisits some past ghosts. It starts out a little light and sarcastic but takes on a more melancholy tone as it goes along. Guilt, grief, regret. It’s all here and it’s all done exceptionally well.

Cosmic Cola is about a girl named Millie who has been relocated to a town called Marsh Landing, famous for it’s Cosmic Cola and not much else. She’s bored and a little pissed off and none too happy about the move but when she “wins”a coveted ticket to an exclusive Halloween soiree things are looking up. But this is a horror story and all is not what it seems! This story takes a wild turn and I loved it and that’s all I’m sayin’! I liked Millie a lot, she’s a relatable character and a fellow Halloween person 😊 What’s not to like?

Visions of the Dream Witch Oh how I loved this story! It hooked me immediately. Two fools find themselves in a bind when one of them is bitten by a Shoggoth (actually I don’t know if they’re fools but I am going to go ahead and assume!). Now the bitten one is starting to rot away and needs some intervention from a grumpy old witch who sends the other fool on an adventure for some magical sap. This story has a dark magical feel to it that I simply adored. The characters are fun and there is no time wasted throwing the reader right into the thick of things.

The Porcupine Boy is another favorite of mine. It’s a strange tale of a man with a messy past who only wants to help others. It’s sweet and a little bit Creepshow-like without the OTT camp and I loved and adored the whole experience here.

In the Family Watch out! This one gets DARK 😆

A Preference for Silence A woman only wants some silence so she can read! Man, could I ever relate to this one! haha 😳

The Toymaker's Joy This was a strange inclusion in a Halloween collection but I am not complaining. It’s about an elf and her invention that makes someone very, very happy! This made me laugh so much. Was it supposed to? I don’t know but it filled me with all kinds of joy and I’m so glad it was here in this book even if it might seem a little bit out of place.

I pretty much enjoyed all of these stories, there weren’t any major duds and the characters came alive immediately. A few of them weren’t completely made for me but they may be made for you so give it a go if anything here sounds like your thing. Love what you love and skim what you don’t and enjoy yourself with these dark and strange little tales.

⭐⭐⭐⭐