Betsy Phillips

When I started reading this book, it wasn't really what I expected. First off, the stories were incredibly short. Many were only one to two pages. I also believed that the stories in the book were true, or true in the sense that they were actual ghost stories known and told around Nashville. I even shelved it as nonfiction before I received the book and read the first line of the Author's Note, "None of the stories in this book are true". Oops. The way the stories are written, though, it's really easy to imagine that they're real.

The book is split up into two parts: April and October, with a story for every day of the month. I would give the April stories 3 stars and the October ones 4 (hence the 3.5 rating overall). There is a noticeable shift in tone between the two sections of the book, with the October stories being more dark and creepy, which was what I wanted. "The Widow Ledbetter" was my favorite. It was the creepiest of all the stories, in my opinion. "Lock One Park" (an April story) is another one that will stick with me. It was a short and simple story, but I loved the ending. This was the one story in the book that I really wished was true.… (mere)

While I own quite a few short story compilations, I don't read them too often. I just have a bit of trouble getting into them. The biggest problem that I tend to have is that a lot of the time, the stories in the compilation are so long that I start to think "Dude, if I wanted to read a novel, I would've picked one up!". However, A City of Ghosts: Stories seemed to be the complete opposite and that turned me off a bit, too.

In a perfect world, short story compilations would be neither too long nor too short. They'd be the perfect size. The stories in A City of Ghosts: Stories were short. And I'm not talking about regular short story short. I'm talking "half the length of regular short stories" short. It felt like once I really started to get into the meat of the short story, it was over. Also, for me, if the the stories are too short, it makes it harder for them to leave a lasting impression. And only a few of them in this compilation left a lasting impression.

The stories that the writer excelled brilliantly at were the haunted house stories. Now, these while extremely short, left a chill down my spine, while one particular one did that while simultaneously making me laugh because of the reactions of the characters. There were some heartwarming ones (I'm going to suck at the titles for a moment since there were so many stories packed in 215 pages and tons of titles) like the one about the waitress in the mirror. Or the ones about ghosts helping people and the people helping the ghosts (one particular ghost story had a young man find the soul of a ghost who was beaten to death by his father). So, there were a few gems in this compilation.

However, there were a couple of stories where I was left thinking "What was the point of that one. It was neither sweet nor scary". Or some other ones that I just felt were semi-boring. I felt like most of the stories in A City of Ghosts were just okay. You had mostly okay with a smattering of gems and a smidge of clunkers. However, I do think this is an okay to pretty good Halloween read. So, I do recommend it.… (mere)