I was really excited to read this - short, strange horror stories is 100% my cup of tea! But unfortunately I struggled to connect with this book. I found the prose style awkward to read, and I wasn’t interested in what was doing on in the narrative. I’d try this author again - but this one didn’t work for me.

Since I’m the first person to rate and review this, you’d think I ought to be rolling out the red carpet, welcoming you to Brookville…alas, no, This won’t be that kind of a review. I’m not going to turn you out at the gate, suggesting you go visit some other ville. This is somewhere in between.
Brookville is somewhere in between too, between sanity and madness, between the author’s imagination and a credible stab at metafiction. Between scary and tragic, between genres, between worlds. A liminal place, a dark dream of a place, imagined vividly and bleakly.
This slender book comprises a bunch of profoundly disturbing short stories, connected at the tail end of it all and bound to a place that is Brookville. The tales range genre wise, the author does her best to disturb her audience. But actually for me the best stories were the more reality based ones, like the one about the theater actress.
The entire production is very sad and very, very dark. It’s kind of like reading someone’s dream journal only to realize that all of their dreams are nightmares. Mind you, I’m no stranger to dark psychological fiction and I enjoy it when done well, but this didn’t really wow in any way. It was decently written for a first effort and well edited and even had sketches for each story, so it’s definitely a professional appearing effort, but it seemed too meandering and dreamy for what it was trying to be, it’s possible that it needed more overall coherence and direction, especially considering the ending. The author shows some promise and might mature into a fine writer someday, but at this time Brookville isn’t that inviting of a destination and, considering her plans to make it into something like a series, it really should have more on an initial draw.
On a positive note, it was a very, very quick read. Thanks Netgalley.