Everyone has a different life and feels it differently

Synopsis

This collection of short stories gives a glimpse into life, love, loss, and the inexplicable in between.

Including themes of grief, finding hope and second chances, facing the consequences of your actions and getting help from the unlikeliest of places.

·        As Cecilia helps the dying, she questions what happens to their spirits. But is she ready to find out?

·        Can a mother’s race through the New Forest save her son?

·        Will visiting a medium bring Christina the closure she needs?

·        Can an intruder help an old lady with her loneliness?

·        Will the start of another wet and miserable Monday morning end with Maeve’s happy ever after?

This anthology includes the prize-winning flash fiction story – ‘Spirit Song’.

Judge’s critique – ‘Unusual, emotional, warm, surprising — a warm, unusual story. It moved me when I read it.’

Full story list:

Spirit Song

Goodbye Forever

Garden Therapy

Starting Over

A Cat-Shaped Hole

The Phone Call

Knocked Off Her Feet

Catalyst

Not Just For Christmas

A Mermaid’s Tail

From the author of fantasy novels Visions of Zarua and ‘Silent Sea Chronicles trilogy’, this short story collection features multiple genres including romance, supernatural and thriller.

My review

A collection filled with short stories, showing how each person react or experience life, love, loss and the inexplicable differently. 

Full story list:
Spirit Song
Goodbye Forever
Garden Therapy
Starting Over
A Cat-Shaped Hole
The Phone Call
Knocked Off Her Feet
Catalyst
Not Just For Christmas
A Mermaid’s Tail

What I like about short stories, is how easy it is to read them even if you only have a short free moment.
And with such subjects, I was for sure intrigued.
While I just said what the advantage is of a collection of short stories, I have to admit that I finished the whole book in one session… 

But I also have to admit that reading each story put me on a rollercoaster of emotions. There were sweet stories in it, heart – warming ones, heart – breaking ones, hopeful stories. But there was also one story that gave me the creeps… So that one story I was glad I finished it quickly! 

What touched me in this collection, is that life passes by for everyone, and everyone is faced with moments of love and loss. Each moment is different from what you have read before. And that is good for the reader, as you don’t have the feeling that the author is falling back to what has been written earlier. 

Of course, with short stories, I sometimes wished they were longer, as I would have loved to get more details or glimpses of ‘what next’.  That obviously doesn’t apply to each story (as one, as stated before, was gruesome enough with what I’ve read). 

There were some fantasy bits in it, and I wouldn’t have minded if they were completely absent as I am not such a fantasy fan myself, but even with my reluctance, I could appreciate their presence in some of the stories, as I felt how they helped the characters. 

I was positively surprised by this author with this first encounter. She managed to find different perfect blends to show us how life can turn around and define us, in a good way or unfortunately also in a bad one…