This story came across as overwritten and reaching.

This debut novel started with poetic prose and I thought I was going to love it. But the overuse of descriptive language almost made me feel like I was reading a college paper from the teachers pet or a student over trying to impress.

This author is obviously talented and has great promise. Overall this book fell flat but I have confidence the author will be better having written it.

This is a very good collection of short stories ranging from a little bit creepy to absolutely terrifying ranging from magical realism to mental health issues. These stories were very well written and kept me gripped. The only issue I had was the e-arc doesn't tell you where one story ends and the other begins.

Would read more from this author.

This format is unreadable. There are no breaks and it was hard to distinguish when a new story started. I will be happy to read another format if available.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC.

Figurehead is a collection of macabre and surreal stories that range from flash fiction to short stories. Holmes dances along the psychological and graphic, creating a feeling of something lurking at the edges of every page, something dark and often sinister, but also curiously intriguing. Many of these stories begin in a confusing manner, leaving the me wondering who-or what-the narrator is, yet that only added to my addiction to consume them.

As with most collections of short stories, some stood out more than others, and in this instance it was (usually) the longer pieces that felt more fleshed out and absorbing. The few that will take up space in my mind for awhile are Sleep (I cannot even begin to explain the way this one affected me) , Ghost Story, Three For a Girl, They Tell Me, and A Small Life. I will definitely be reaching for a full length novel by Holmes.

Thank you both Author and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this.

This wasn't my typical reading, but I still enjoyed it all the same. A collection of short stories from a woman's perspective is always high on my list. With that said, since I've read it once I don't feel a compelling need to reach out and buy it first thing when it's out of production. However, I do recommend that if you are more into short stories that are beautifully written with engrossing detail, then you should definitely snatch this up with you get the first opportunity.

Book full of creepy short stories. I enjoyed the majority of them, but found some of the shorter ones to feel lacking something.
The first story is good, but felt a bit too meandering in the middle. I would recommend continuing with the collection even if you don't love the first one. It finished very strong with the last one ending up being my favourite.

This review based on an ARC made available through Parthian Books & NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Probably more of a 3.5 for me, because of some of the content (which I will list below in the spoiler section), but the writing was so good I'm bumping it up to a four.

Figurehead is a collection of short stories, a mix of lengths, some only a few pages long. I thought they were arranged well, both in themes and varying between the shorter and longer texts. The stories cover themes of identity, desire, metamorphosis, & women's relationships to home. They are dark, at times macabre & disturbing. There are surreal elements that reminded me of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (one of my favourite short story authors, if not the favourite.) The stories rely on mythological & fairy-tale symbology and Jungian fears.

I have a lot of thoughts I'm still processing through, but here are some of the highlights:

- Little Matrons is told through the perspective of a set of Metroyshka dolls, which I absolutely loved.

- Sleep I think will stay with my the longest.

- Piece By Piece is about someone slowly losing their identity and becoming one with their house, which is one of my favourite types of short stories.

- Three For A Girl is another house one, very house-horror, really fun & creepy with an ending I did not expect.

- Heartwood was heartbreaking.

Overall I really enjoy Holmes writing style. I think there is a lot here to unpack and analyze. It may have originally been published in 2018, but this is definitely a story collection for a post-quarantine world. A lot of themes of being house-bound, losing/changing autonomy... If you are into dark short stories, this is definitely for you. I love the writing style. Beautifully told. So many good turns of phrases. Outside of the one story (They Tell Me, explained below) I didn't want to put it down & stayed up waaaaaay to late the night I started it.

For possible triggers & why I will not be re-reading some of these stories:
[Being connected to fairy-tales, one can expect a certain amount of violence. It is more psychological than graphic, but there are some larger violences that were not great for my mental health.
1) The Demon L is built on the concept of almost-rape. We are told that she is never violenced, but her altered state is much like a DID system's Protector, so... There is some doubt there. Either way, it could be potentially triggering.
2) They Tell Me is full of losing bodily autonomy & medical rape. It gave me really bad flashbacks & nightmares. The story implies that the main character is either asexual or a lesbian, which made it so much worse for me, as an asexual person. Just. Really bad for me. It's absurdly well-written, but I could never re-read it.
3) Tattletale includes really intense bullying, to the point where I skimmed through the story & could not read it because it was going to make me dissociate. The bullied person does get revenge n the end, but the whole thing was too much for me, personally.
4) Beneath the Skin is basically a monster-f*cker story, which didn't bother me, but I could see the sex scene being upsetting to some people.
There may be other things, but these are the four that stuck out to me. You, of course, know your own self & what will be healthy, what will be cathartic, what would be a form of self-harm, and what is best to avoid. I like to know possible triggers beforehand, so I can avoid trauma-attacks whenever possible. I hope this is helpful to you.]

This collection of short stories was sometimes terrifying and sometimes puzzling, overall an enjoyable read despite being a bit uneven in places.

Holmes has a strength in taking the mundane and making it monstrous in just a few short pages, turning nesting dolls and ship figureheads into objects of horror. However, I enjoyed her longer stories most - Three For a Girl was particularly haunting, literally and figuratively. It’s one of a few stories from Figurehead I’ll be thinking about for a while (Sleep and Runty are also favorites), but I’ll admit some of the others blended together for me.

Fans of horror and story collections will likely find something to enjoy in Figurehead, but if the genre and the format don’t excite you than even Holmes’ excellent prose probably won’t do it for you.

Great collection of short stories from a female prospective. I read these in only a few hours. Kept my attention and interest. I would definitely buy this collection to add to my personal books.

Thanks to Netgalley and Parthian Books for the ARC!

On one hand: so many of these stories chilled me and caught me in a very specific way that I found delightful. They were potent hauntings, ones that turned the mirror of the strange back on the people caught in them. But on the other hand, like a lot of other reviews have noted, there was some level of inconsistency here. The collection could have been somewhat pared down, to allow the stories that shone to REALLY shine. Furthermore, and this is just a small issue, sometimes it did feel like the stories bordered on prose for the sake of prose, which, while gorgeous, left me feeling like I hadn't properly gotten anything out of the experience.

Generally though, I found this a super stunning and a super fascinating read, that was the kind of writing and horror reboot that my brain needed!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I read this whilst staying up for about 22 hours with a pox ridden child so I've sat on it a few days and reread some of the stories.

For me the central theme of the collection is the female experience. Carly Holmes' prose is in turn lyrical and sparse. All her stories evoke the unheimlich, the subversion of the comforting and mundane. Throughout the collection there's a constant sense of dread, the feeling of there being something lurking just at the edge of your peripheral vision. Would highly recommend this beautiful and uncanny fever dream of a book.


"There were beige and silver whorls on all of the pages, the precious marks made by grubby little fingers turning the story from start to end, over and over. She wanted to press her grown-up fingers over those ancient blemishes, absorb the passion and sweetness of her younger self and remember the past."

#Figurehead #bookstagram #shortstories

I whizzed through this collection of short stories. they were all so well written and so gothic it honestly made the darkness in my soul tingle. I havent read a collection of ghost stories/gothic stories this good since Shirley Jackson or Angela Carter. I loved them.