This sounded like exactly like my type of story collection with stories that are supposed to blur the edges of reality. The writing, though, just did not work for me.

I’ve been developing a love of short stories lately and this collection is one of the best. It often felt like I was watching an episode of Sort Of, as brown queer characters navigated life primarily in Toronto. Varghese’s language is compelling and sensory and she captures the complexities of family and community so well. Would recommend!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Absolutely stunning collection of stories. The magic realism elements only added to the beauty and heart break of these a million fold. It felt like every single story was my favorite as I was reading, which is always my favorite way to go through collections.

Highly, highly recommend.

Wonderful collection of short stories full of queerness and a touch of the creepy. I'm excited to read more from this author.

Chrysalis is a short story collection about women of color, queerness, and family.

I am notoriously critical about short story collections and have been trying really hard this year to find ones that I enjoy, so when I read this description I thought it would be a great choice. While there were surely some stories I enjoyed, the collection as a whole wasn't a big stand out to me.

Some of the stories I loved included one about a trans girl falling in love, a BOGO shoe sale (dark cinderella vibes about the cost of beauty, desirability, etc.) and a neighborhood where families turn into animals at night and eat each other.

The stories I enjoyed I really wanted to be fleshed out more - which is almost always where my frustration lies in short story collections. On the other hand, the stories I didn't connect with felt too short and obscure for me to even get a grasp of what was going on.

Maybe short story collections just aren't for me <3

*Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Really poignant ideas about migration, conveyed with such specific detail about Indo-Canadian experiences. I especially enjoyed how many different tones and moods the collection covers. I'd happily recommend this to many audiences, and foresee myself coming back to this more than once. Packs a punch for its short length.

Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese is a collection of short stories that explore the intersections of queerness, racism, and love, laced with horror-like themes, This was everything I love wrapped into a book, like, short stories with tense, horror-like elements discussing racism and queerness? Sign me up! I went in with high expectations and wasn't let down! I think most of the stories were the perfect length, leaving the reader with a sense of eerie foreboding.

I want to give particular praise for Midnight at the Oasis, a short story that dives into gender identity, family and cultural approval, and the price of living authentically and happily. The last page gave me chills, with prose such as, "Somewhere in the city, the family into whose hands I was born mourns the boy I never was, fails to see who I am, who I've always been. The failure is theirs, not mine, and I am strong enough to let them go..." Overall, Varghese's stories haunt you long after your reading, and her magical, sensual prose works likewise.

Thank you so so much to NetGalley and Anansi Press for the ARC! I enjoyed every second of it.

do YOU like short story collections that are just a little bit weird? do YOU think the summer is the perfect time for a smidge of body horror? do YOU stay up late contemplating how the gross and the sublime in human experience are often inextricably intertwined? do YOU have some queer racialized kid trauma you want to work through in short fiction form? are YOU full of female rage and ready to rip someone to shreds? have YOU ever wondered if montreal is a city of vampires? then wow do i have a short story collection for YOU!
carnival barker-ing aside, this was a really great collection of stories - just enough decay to remind you of your own mortal condition, just enough unexpected endings to send shivers up your hairline and occasionally make you gasp in relief, and just enough social commentary to give the horror an even more chilling context. this pairs well with hozier's first album, a whiff of petrichor, and the darkness of the early morning hours

(also thank you to @houseofanansi for sending me an arc of this wayyyy back in the spring, sorry i was so late getting to it!)

I really enjoyed this collection, it was a great mix of different genres. I especially loved the horror elements in some of the stories. My biggest complaint is that some stories were too short, I just wished they lasted a little longer!
My favorites were:
In the Bone Fields
Cherry Blossom Fever
Night Zoo
Chitra
Midnight at the Oasis
I really enjoyed every story in the collection, these are just the ones that stood out and will stick with me for a while!
I am so grateful to NetGalley and Anansi Press for the e-ARC. I cannot wait to see what else Varghese writes.

I was so excited to get an ARC of this book!

I have really been loving short story collections recently, and I my attention was instantly captured by the promise that this book was "blurring the lines between the monstrous and the mundane." While I definitely had stories I liked more than others, I thought this book delivered on that promise perfectly. The fairytale-like quality to many of the stories, combined with imperfect but intriguing characters made me excited at the beginning of every single story to see what it would be about.

My favourites were The Vetala's Song, In the Bone Fields, Cherry Blossom Fever, and, of course, Chitra, an incredible Cinderella retelling. I wasn't always a fan of the writing style and some stories I wish dug deeper into the themes being explored, but I have to say that finishing the book with Chitra made me forget all about those things. It's such a great story and one I'll be thinking about for a long time.

This was an overall solid collection of weird litfic short stories, dealing with a wide variety of topics. There were a few standouts in this collection, like a retelling of Cinderella set at a mall (SO fun and weird and well-constructed!); the other stories were generally good, but not hugely memorable in my opinion. I wanted them to stick in my head, but there wasn't anything about them which really caught my attention, and I ended up feeling like there wasn't much to say about them.

I'd recommend the book and I'll be keeping an eye on what the author puts out next, but I wanted just a little more from this than I got. Thanks to Netgalley and House of Anansi Press for the ARC!

Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese is a collection of stories that explore transformation, belonging, queerness, family, and community. The stories center around women of color and show the reader the complex intersections of their lives through a feminist lens.

While I found some of the stories to be poignant and brilliant, I must admit that many of them didn't quite hold my attention. However, I would still recommend this book to prospective readers who are interested in magical realism and folklore, and who appreciate stories that take a critical look at societal power dynamics. One of these stories was featured in Queer Little Nightmares, another story collection I highly recommend and what initially drew me to Varghese's work.

One of the standout stories for me was "The Dreamer," which follows a woman who repeatedly dies in her dreams until she finds salvation in an unexpected source. This story, like many others in the collection, blurs the lines between the monstrous and the mundane and left me feeling haunted long after I finished reading it. It was one of my favorites.

Varghese's writing is poetic, sensual, and surreal, and she has a knack for creating settings that transport the reader to other worlds. Her exploration of sexuality, cultural expectation, and the ways in which racialized women are robbed of power is both timely and important. I appreciated those aspects of the book.

Overall I found this to be a unique and thought-provoking collection of stories that will appeal to readers who enjoy genre-bending fiction with a feminist twist. While not all of the stories stood out for me, the ones that did made the read well worth it.

Thanks so so much to House of Anansi Press, Inc, Astoria, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book prior to its release in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I went into this collection of speculative short stories without knowing too much. So many of the stories in here are captivating, and I never really knew what would come next.

The stories range from slightly unnerving to chilling, with themes of queerness (love the sapphic trans rep in one especially), desire for connection, transformation, and belonging. With touches of magical realism and horror, I found myself looking forward to each turn of the page.

I love the way Varghese writes descriptions, vivid and haunting. My favourite stories are In the Bone Fields, Cherry Blossom Fever, Stories in the Language of the Fist, and Midnight at the Oasis.

There are definitely darker themes but what is horror if not a reflection of the darker aspects of life. The author has identified the following content warnings: self-harm, domestic violence, racism, miscarriage, homophobia, and homophobic violence.

If you like short story collections and want to hear from a more diverse perspective, this collection is for you!

Also, I see that she has written for Queer Little Nightmares, which is on my TBR, so I can't wait to get to that as well!

Thank you to NetGalley and House of Anansi Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Beautifully written debut short story collection. I loved the uniqueness of each story. There were so many themes explored in the stories… racism, queerness, relationships, etc. Excited to read more works from this author!

Anuja Varghese's debut collection of short stories, Chrysalis, is a powerful exploration of the experiences of racialized women. With precision and insight, Varghese delves into complex intersections of family, community, sexuality, and cultural expectation, aiming at how these women are robbed of power and agency.

The stories in Chrysalis are, by turns, poignant and chilling, blurring the lines between the real world and worlds beyond. From a couple in a crumbling marriage who faces divine intervention to a woman who dies in her dreams until she finds salvation in an unexpected source, to a teenage misfit who discovers a darkness lurking just beyond the borders of her suburban home, Varghese's tales are haunting and unforgettable.

What sets Chrysalis apart is Varghese's ability to weave together themes of race, gender, and power in an urgent and deeply personal way. Her characters are complex, fully realized individuals who grapple with the weight of societal expectations, familial pressures, and their desires. In each story, Varghese reveals how these women navigate their lives gracefully and resiliently, despite overwhelming adversity.

Overall, Chrysalis is a stunning debut from a talented writer. Varghese's stories are masterfully crafted, with a keen eye for detail and empathy. For readers looking for a nuanced and thought-provoking exploration of race, gender, and power, Chrysalis is a must-read.

Chrysalis is a book of metamorphosis as told by outside observers. While at times a little boring and mundane, I also found myself drawn in and a tad unsettled. The narrative choice to never hear from the main character herself was so interesting and I feel like someone smarter than me could talk at length about how often women don't get to decide their own stories and are instead made up of other people's perceptions and opinions.

The stories here were so addictive. I love the hints of horror and the sinister atmosphere that Varghese uses to develop not only her characters, but the world around them and the people closest to them.

She explores themes and issues of identity, sexuality, family, acceptance, transformation, jealousy, infidelity, and yearning. I really could not stop reading. Varghese's characters are interacting not only with their own situations, but the social and cultural ramifications of their actions and way of life. It is always rewarding to read a book with characters that you can empathize with and share in their experiences. And that is what is accomplished here with every story.

I was so profoundly moved by the message and plotline in this article and am seriously so thankful to the House of Anansi Press, NetGalley, and Anuja Varghese for granting me access to this magnificent read before it was set to publish to the public. I always appreciate well-done literary fiction, and I definitely count Chrysalis as a well-done publication.

A collection of stories exploring queerness, the immigrant experience, racism, and more, Varghese’s work plays with expectations. There are a lot of very neatly done reveals in the se stories, with rug being pulled out from the story in only a few words. I enjoyed this collection - especially with an Alice Munro reference!