Like most short story collections, a real mixed bag which is why it’s taken me a while to write this. Some of the story’s were great, dreamlike and compelling. Others felt like what happens when Ai write short stories and gets it completely wrong so you end up reading just random nonsense.
I’ve read a couple of books by Kelly link previously (not through netgalley) and really enjoyed them so feel a bit sad that this one wasn’t the same. Perhaps wasn’t the book for me, even if it was well written in places.

This is a collection of short stories that I have dipped in now & again for the last few months. I was attracted to the idea of the retelling of fairy tales - I think I was expecting the retold tales to be more familiar. I did enjoy some of them particularly Skinder's Veil although I found other overlong.

Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

White Cat, Black Dog is a collection of 7 re-imagined fairy tales set in the modern world.

Some stories I really enjoyed for the odd-ness of them such as The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear. Other stories I feel like I missed something.

Was definitely an interesting read still and I would read more from this author.

Many thanks to Head of Zeus and Kelly Link for the advanced copy of White Cat, Black Dog via NetGalley, in return for my honest and unbiased review. Quick note: I don’t recap plots in my reviews, as it’s easy enough to read the book’s synopsis and blurbs, I purely focus on my feelings & opinions of how the books makes me feel.

This collection of 7 short stories was, for me, a mixed bag. Some were great (Skinder’s Veil being my favourite) and some were not so much (The White Cat’s Divorce). I am puzzled by the choices the editors made for the order of the stories, as I feel the weakest story was used to open the book, and it almost caused me to put the book down entirely and not read the remaining six.

It should be noted that, as the blurb states, these are not retellings, but stories inspired by fairy tales and folk tales. Not much of the original/classic tale is left in these stories, although the general gist is still there.

An interesting collection of stories, which will appeal to a range of genre interests.

Moods: adventurous, challenging, dark, mysterious, tense
Pace: fast
Trigger warnings: Blood/Gore, Death, Drugs, Infidelity, Murder

Rating 3.75/5 rounded up to 4

This was a nice collection of weird short stories in the magical realism genre.
I didn’t like each story as much. I especially liked Prince Hat & Skinder’s Veil.
I rate this book 3,5/5

These weird stories pulled me right out of a reading slump! If you live magical realism and are up for some weirdness, this might be for you.

I didn't know the reference/base of these stories, but nevertheless I truly enjoyed most of them—especially the creepy vibes running through all of them.

Captivating, weird little stories. Perfect for when you want to read magical realism but don't want to read a whole book.

This was an enjoyable short story collection. I’m a huge sucker for fairytale inspired tales!
I enjoyed the stories to varying degrees but this averaged out as a 3 star rating which doesn’t feel like it gives the book justice because I did really enjoy most of these stories. My individual ratings are below:

The White Cat’s Divorce 3/5
Prince Hat Underground 4.25/5
The White Road 3.5/5
The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear 3.5/5
The Game of Smash and Recovery 1.5/5
The Lady and the Fox 4/5
Skindler’s Veil 3/5

My favourite stories were Prince Hat Underground and The Lady and the Fox.

I enjoyed the creepy and haunting vibe throughout. I’ll definitely be looking out for more books by this author!

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this, but I was rather disappointed, I wasn't familiar with the original stories for the most part, so maybe I missed the point in terms of the retellings, but I just found that the writing was rather juvenile in style and the stories themselves were not very captivating. The 'short stories' seemed to drag on and it was a bit of a struggle to finish.

The way I felt about this book was similar to a lot of readers. This is definitely one of the most memorable books I've ever read, and that's because it was so weird and strangely plotted out. I enjoyed the fact that it was multiple retellings of different fairytales, and that the spin on the traditional tale was thought provoking and attention grabbing.

The writing feels like it's a bedtime tale to me, and I didn't necessarily dislike that, but I didn't love it at the same time. I'm really on the fence about this book, but I know that others have really enjoyed it.

3★
“The White Road (The Musicians of Bremen)

All of this happened a very long time ago and so, I suppose, it has taken on the shape of a story, a made-up thing, rather than true things that happened to me and to those around me. Things I did and that others did. And so I will write it down that way. As a story.”

The seven stories in this collection are inspired by old tales, fairy or traditional, with the title of the old tales written underneath Link’s titles. I admit I didn’t know some of the original fairy tales or fables, and the ones I did, I had a hard time connecting with Link’s.

Having said that, the ones I enjoyed, I really enjoyed. The ones I didn’t like, I skimmed. They are far-fetched, but then what folktales aren’t? We who choose to read them learn to accept that people transform into animals and vice-versa. If we can suspend disbelief that far, what are the boundaries?

I won’t discuss the stories, just select a few representative quotations. This is about a man who wants to live forever.

“The White Cat’s Divorce
(The White Cat)
All stories about divorce must begin some other place, and so let us begin with a man so very rich, he might reach out and have almost any thing he desired. . .”

He intends to live as well as possible until

“ a day in which an expert team will cryogenically freeze my body as well as the body of my current wife until such a time when medical advances can resurrect me into some unknown hellish future in a body that can satisfy more than three women at a time while also battling apocalyptic mutant lizards and conquering whatever remains of the New York Stock Exchange.”

Another I liked was Prince Hat, particularly this description of the seasons of the sun.

“Prince Hat Underground
(East of the Sun, West of the Moon)
And who, exactly is Prince Hat? Gary, who has lived with Prince Hat for over three decades, still sometimes wonders.
. . .
Off to Reykjavik goes Gary. When he was here with Prince Hat, all those years ago, it was summer. Light the nurse washing everyone and everything, light the voyeur seeping in around the black seal of curtains in their hotel room. It pressed on his eyeballs, lapped hotly at his skin and came pouring out through him again like a tide when he tried to sleep. He and Prince Hat went to clubs, danced, drank, came out at 3 A.M. and found light the idler still waiting for them.
. . .

Now, like Prince Hat, the sun is sly, sneaks off as soon as you’ve caught sight of it, staying away as if it means to stay away forever.”

I enjoy quirky stories and grew up loving old myths and legends. This selection is right out there, and I’m balancing the ones I loved against the ones I didn’t care for to arrive at my (completely subjective) middle-of-the-road rating.

If you have access, you might enjoy the article about this book in the 3 April 2023 edition of ‘The New Yorker’ with the headline ‘The Story Goes.’

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/white-cat-black-dog-kelly-link-book-review

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus Publishing for the copy for review.

Review in progress and to come.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review

An enjoyable short story collection that defies genre and style across the 7 stories included with it. Some definite thought provoking points are also included.

This book consists of 7 beautifully written short stories, all the stories are enough to leave multiple thoughts and questions in your head, but also so in-depth that they could all be novels within there own right. Throughout reading each story, I would get half way through and believe that that one was my favourite so far and thus the cycle began again by time I began the next. All of the stories, all though unrelated were all equally random so is a perfect read for someone in a reading block or looking for a bit of a different book (my personal favourite was Prince Hat).

White Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link is a collection of seven short stories each with a slightly different style, not all within the same genre.
One of the best things about this book is the variety of stories on offer. Each one is different from the last, with "The White Cat's Divorce," being my favourite, "The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear," being my least and for me, "Prince Hat Underground," seemed to go on for a little too long.
However, this is a minor criticism and shouldn't deter anyone from picking up this book.
Overall, I enjoyed White Cat, Black Dog: Stories a lot, never really sure where the stories are going to take me.

This is it. This is the weird and slightly disturbing short story collection that's going to haunt me until the end of my days. So this was a mixed bag. The writing wasn't great. There was a lot of stuff that wasn't needed in the stories and honestly some of the stories bored me completely, probably because they were trying to say something that I didn't get. But I enjoyed some of them and the last story Skinder's Veil, I am obsessed with.

Skinder's Veil is about a PHD student who goes to housesit for someone to get away from his annoying roommate. I didn't need to know all the stuff about how the roommate had so much sex and that his girlfriend was haunted by a ghost. That all bogged down the story. It could have easily been summed up in a couple of lines. But the actual bits in the house and the descriptions of the visitors and the magic of it all completely captivated me. I've been thinking about it since I read it and I definitely want to read it again some time.

The rest of the book, I will not revisit. I enjoyed some of the stories well enough, but not enough to read again. but the weirdness of it all and that last story is gonna be something that I think I'm gonna remember for a long time.

Kelly Link’s collection of seven stories cleverly retells well known and more obscure fairy tales. She managed to capture the essence of each story while presenting tales that feel entirely new.

How much does any retelling need to reference the original story? In sone it’s pretty much the original story but with a new perspective but another option is just the author to play with the bones of a tale and build a very different body for it. In Kelly Link’s beguiling White Cat, Black Dog we get a great collection of tales that use folk tales as the basis for some very different stories that knowing nothing of the source material will not prevent you having a great time reading them.

Starting off with the opening tale The White Cat’s Divorce reads like a folk tale mix of Succession and Wes Anderson tales as a greedy billionaire fearing death sends his children out to get impossible items so he has not got to fear seeing them age and see his own mortality staring at him. Link though makes this tale playfully work so it almost seems natural for a group of cats to run a recreational cannabis farm and then have one bell the slightly lost but good youngest son out. Then towards the end the tale gets darker and bloodier yet still managed to hold your attention.

Prince Hat Underground is a tale of a lover kidnapped by the Queen of Hell but in this case our Prince Hat if part of a middle aged gay couple based in New York. It is though about loving someone warts and all - knowing all their imperfections and still knowing they are the one for you. Link takes us to Iceland; the route to Hell underneath it and a strange assortment of charcters to we go to hell. It’s messy; icky, loving and one of my favourites in the collection and having older characters as the focus is a refreshing change and works better for the tale too.

A much more ominous tale awaits in The White Road a post apocalyptic tale mixing a group of Mail carriers and entertainers crossing a dangerous version of the US where a mysterious white road on the edge of vision can spell ruin for anyone. Link has a wonderful sense of build up dropping hints all is not well - corpses on display in living rooms; little superstitions and then leads to a horrific climax. How far will you ever got to save your skin and those of others? It’s nightmarish without ever fully explaining itself and leaves the reader to judge did the right thing happen and there are no easy answers.

Sone horror is best never explained and in The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear there are secrets kept and never revealed but we suspect the answers are devastating. A college professor is kept away from her wife and child thanks to airport delays. She has a medical appointment she cannot meet. Link uses the dislocation of waiting endlessly in airports to add pressure and stress to the situation creating a strange not quite right reality where people all resemble each other; revelations may have bearing on our narrator and their own unexplainable condition may be about to erupt. It’s got a sense of menace all the way through and yet very little truly horrible happens. Impressive storytelling!

With The Lady and The Fox have an almost English style tale of a young lady staying with a wealthy family every Christmas and being treated almost as one: yet every Christmas she meets a strange man who hangs outside. Link captures growing up; first lusts and loves; standing up for what you want and it’s ultimately a warm tale that I enjoyed a lot.

In Skinder’s Veil which I’ve had the pleasure of reading we get a strange wandering tale where a student meets his housemate’s girlfriend who gets constantly visited by an unseen ghost who finds her boyfriend repellent; then we move to a house he must sit with two rules – always let people in who are at the back door and never allow the owner Skinder inside. Link weaves in little dark folk tales that may or may not impact the story and it gets strangely weirder and uneasy as we wonder what happens when the front door is opened. A dark magical mythical tale that suggests so many strange things out there are still to find.

This is a hugely enjoyable set of stories and even when I didn’t know the source tale I had a lot of fun. Where I did I enjoyed the changes made. It’s definitely reminded me to try more of Link’s work and well worth your time if your enjoy unusual spins on classic tales as well as gorgeous storytelling.

2,5
I liked some of these reinvented fairy tales but most were too strange and silly for my liking. I’m afraid this was not for me.
Thank you Head of Zeus and Netgalley for the ARC.

An insanely brilliant, magical, mind-bending collection of fairytale inspired short stories. Link intrigues, delights and confuses in equal measure and this was a pleasure to read. Highly recommended for fans of Angela Carter.