I purchased this book for my own personal collection.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: November 8, 2022
Summary:
The debut short story collection from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man, featuring ten bone-chilling and mind-bending tales.
Timeslips. Doomsday scenarios. Killer butterflies. C. J. Tudor’s novels are widely acclaimed for their dark, twisty suspense plots, but with A Sliver of Darkness, she pulls us even further into her dizzying imagination.
In Final Course, the world has descended into darkness, but a group of old friends make time for one last dinner party. In Runaway Blues, thwarted love, revenge, and something very nasty stowed in a hat box converge. In Gloria, a strange girl at a service station endears herself to a cold-hearted killer, but can a leopard really change its spots? And in I’m Not Ted, a case of mistaken identity has unforeseen, fatal consequences.
Riveting and explosively original, A Sliver of Darkness is C. J. Tudor at her most wicked and uninhibited.
My thoughts:
C.J. Tudor is an author I’ve been wanting to read for quite some time so when I saw this book last year, I grabbed it, not realizing at first that it was a collection of short stories. Fortunately, over the past few years, I’ve really come to enjoy reading short stories, and these were quite an interesting bunch of stories.
I loved that C.J. Tudor gave an introduction for every single story. I’ve never seen that before. Not only is there an introduction to the whole book and how it came to be, but then she gives us a little background for each story. That really helped me to get in the right mindset for each and I loved that. While these are dark and twisted, with undertones of horror and mystery, I never felt that they were too much for me, which I appreciated. They were a bit bizarre, but nothing I couldn’t handle or that gave me nightmares!
Now as I find with all short story collections I read, I enjoyed some more than others, but I would definitely recommend this collection and I highly recommend reading this during Spooky Season if you are so inclined! My favorites were The Copy Shop and The Final Course, but I have to say I didn’t dislike any of them and that’s saying something.
Now I’m really eager to finally read a novel by C.J. Tudor if these short stories are anything to go by!
