As a short story collection, I find this to be intriguing, unsettling, and sometimes horrific. In a good way of course. My favorite stories have a similar trope, and this is something that this author does well. The solitary main character who doesn't quite fit in, or have that inner circle of strong relationships. We are alone with their thoughts as strange things happen to them. Paul Tremblay is really good at that POV, but he shows that he can do more in other stories using different styles and POV.

The main story The Beast You Are is where he really shines. It is a 5/5 star read for me. I am so disappointed that it is only 80 pages, because I could easily see this as a 400 page fantasy/horror novel with multiple POV, including political and environmental themes. There could've been a heroes journey for a few different characters. The seeds are there. In just 80 pages I experienced so much but I wanted more. There's a cult, a serial killer, and they are all animals which is adorable. I hope there is a way to expand this story. The characters are so fleshed out and separate from one another. You think you know who the villain is in the beginning, but by the end it's too late to stop the real evil that was in front of you all along. So, so good.

I have always been a big fan of Tremblay's writing style. This one was not my favorite but overall I enjoyed this book of short stories. I definitely liked some more than others. I really liked that a few of the stories have characters from his other novels.
If you're a Paul Tremblay fan, give this book a go!

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts

I was more than disappointed by this collection. After great reads like Survivor Song, The Pallbearers Club, and my favorite, Disappearance at Devil's Rock, I expected more. Unfortunately, this didn't do it for me. I found one or two stores to be okay.

I'll admit that I'm a Paul Tremblay newbie. "A Head Full of Ghosts" and "A Cabin at the End of the World" have been on my TBR list for a while, but this short story collection (plus a novella?) is the first thing of Tremblay's that I've actually read. This was a bit hit and miss for me, but the stories I really enjoyed I *really* enjoyed. "House of Windows" was my favorite - very trippy and Lynchian. I also really liked "The Last Conversation" (sci-fi horror), and "Howard Sturgis and the Letter and the Van and What He Found When He Went Back to His House" (I'm not sure how to categorize, a sort of sideways thriller maybe?). The titular story, which is almost novella length, was fun in an "Animal Farm" meets "American Psycho" kind of way. The collection is definitely worth checking out if you're into stories that are unsettling/spooky/weird.

love Paul Tremblay's novels and I think the stories here are a testament to his ability to write short-form tales with his signature style. This is to say that if you, like me, love his novels, you'll definitely love this book as well.

He covers a wide range of narration here from the more traditional "short story" format to epistolary. Not all the stories are straight-up horror but they all fit into the weird, strange, and mind-bending category. And they're all written very well!

The novella in this collection is the titular story and it's something I've never read before, animals that act, talk, and live like humans with a monster and a mad butcher leaving a bloody trail. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is weird/horror/speculative fiction at its finest. With that being said, if you're not a fan of this particular brand of horror, you probably won't enjoy it as much as I did.

A collection of short stories- I found some more captivating than others. Not the typical Tremblay that I’ve grown very fond of, but some real gems mixed in. “The Last Conversation” is the stand-out short story in the collection that will remain with me for a long time. Truly haunting. All-in-all, though, I’m just not sure if short stories are for me. There just isn’t enough time to build characters and care about what happens to them. Thank you for e-access in exchange for an honest review.

My favorite thing about Paul Tremblay is how he plays with the idea of novel/la. A great example is his last book, The Pallbearers which included notes and scribbles and scrawls. I loved it and love anytime someone colors outside the lines.

This series of shorts is similar. There are multiple stories where you need to catch up quickly to what Tremblay is doing - some are super short and more like a draft of something we will see in the future. All require your full attention for the conclusion, in class Tremblay style.

If you are a Tremblay fan, or just love haunting short stories, this is a fun and creepy book for you!
#WilliamMorrow #TheBeastYouAre #PaulTremblay

The title novella, “The Beast You Are,” is a mini epic in which the destinies and secrets of a village, a dog, and a cat are intertwined with a giant

In this house we stan Paul Tremblay. This is a great and varied collection of short pieces. I also really appreciated the notes at the end. This collection is perfect for already established fans and people looking to get into Tremblay,

I didn't find this as gripping as one of Tremblay's full length novels. The stories were neat but maybe short story format really isn't for me.

A big fan of Paul , and I think this short story collection is wonderful. I especially like that a few of the stories pull in characters from his longer novels. Would definitely recommend for fans of short, spooky stories!

The Beast You Are is a fantastic short story collection that was an absolute pleasure to read. Full of spine tingling and thought provoking horror stories mixed with science fiction and fantastical elements, I found myself eagerly anticipating what each next story would bring to the table.

Some favorites included “Ice Cold Lemonade”, especially since I grew up in a haunted house (on a haunted street, no less), “The Last Conversation”, which was full of unexpected twists, and “The Dead Thing”, which was delightfully creepy.

My only complaint us that some of the stories, like “The Party” were far too short and I would have loved for that to have been fleshed out more.

Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow, and Paul Tremblay for an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

I just adore Paul Tremblay. The Beast You Are was an incredible collection of short fiction stories. Horry, suspense, mystery, thriller. It's got it all. Reader warning, these are creepy and sinister stories with vague endings that many have said left them unsatisfied, but I loved them.

In his most recent collection of short stories, Paul Tremblay showcases his extraordinary writing skill once more. He knits together the components of each narrative, creating a real sense of tension that holds the reader until the very end. He does this through superb storytelling and beautifully built suspense.

However, despite the author's talent, I felt dissatisfied. The stories themselves were interesting and well-written, but I was quite disappointed by how they ended. I frequently found it difficult to comprehend what the author was trying to say, which left me feeling confused and let down.

Despite this, I still think that this compilation will be quite enjoyable for Tremblay lovers. It wasn't my particular favorite, but there's no denying the author has a distinctive and compelling voice. Even if I might not have connected entirely with these stories, other readers might have a different experience.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the chance to review this early!

Paul Tremblay can write and has such a creative mind. I struggled with how to rate this book. There were ones that I thought were very good and others were good but didn't knock my socks off. But it is like that with short story collections, some will resonate more than others. But what I do love is his writing and how he inherently knows how to create tension, creepiness, and vivid characters. This book is categorized as horror and yet, it feels more like science fiction with creepy things happening.

There is a novella at the end, which I have mixed feelings about. It is a unique style and not one that blew me away.

I find that I enjoy his novels more than his short stories and/novellas.

Well written, experimental, and creative.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing this PDF to me for an honest review. I have not read Paul Tremblay’s penultimate collection, Growing Things. While I greatly enjoyed his breakout novel Headful of Ghosts and its follow-up Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, I found The Cabin at the End of the World’s refusal to provide an actual ending annoying and Survivor Song derivative (pregnant woman in an end of the world scenario…just like Bird Box, but with a rage virus sort of thing seen far too many times already, and the added “bonus” of predictable political commentary). I’d backtracked to an older collection, In the Mean Time, and found most of the stories ambiguous and elliptical, not especially satisfying. Since several were repurposed in Growing Things, I didn’t make it a priority, but Shyamalan’s strong adaptation of Cabin (now with a true ending, albeit one that could have used at least a measure of subtlety) renewed my interest in checking out something new from Tremblay, so I requested The Beast You Are. I may have been better off with Growing Things.

It starts off well with what I found to be the best story, “Ice Cold Lemonade... ” The meta foundation feels counterintuitive, but the concept is intriguing—a writer reflects on the circumstances behind a childhood drawing sent to him by his mother. This story feels complete and has a prevailing eeriness. The drawback to starting with this is it fosters an expectation for a similar experience that the book rarely delivers. It’s not trying to, but I think many readers would prefer it did. While I wouldn’t quite subscribe to other reviews calling the collection “experimental”—that seems a more alienating summation than the reality—it does traffic in that same ambiguous and elliptical trade that rarely satisfied me with In the Mean Time. The stories often feel like the presentation of their concepts is the goal, rather than exploring any conflict or resolution to them.
“Red Eyes” alludes to characters from A Headful of Ghosts, as does “The Postal Zone.” I preferred the latter, although its format as a letter column to Fangoria limits the narrative possibilities. (It does have a funny meta moment with one letter complaining about Tremblay’s endings.) Replace those AHOG characters from “Red Eyes”—which you could, because nothing in the story is especially dependent on their roles from the novel—and there isn’t much of a lasting impression. “The Last Conversation” is one of the high points. By his own admission in the story notes, Tremblay is channeling Brian Evenson here. As one of the best practitioners of the short story in the genre today, Evenson is a tough act to imitate, but Tremblay does well with it. The reveal seems a foregone conclusion pretty early on but it’s an interesting plot with a deeper melancholy, and one of the “complete” stories in the collection. I liked the concept of “House of Windows,” with a mysterious building that seems to appear overnight beside a library. The ending is evocative, but one also gets the sense the author may not actually know what he is implying with it, and it’s just a way to move on to the next story or book.

This same pall hangs over “Howard Sturgis and the Letters and the Van and What He Found When he Went Back to His House,” another one that I found intriguing but doesn’t seem to build to a conclusion so much as manufacture a stopping place. “The Large Man” employs a POV repetition trick that I liked. It’s one of the more successful of the stranger entries. "The Blog at the End of the World" predate the pandemic, though like "Postal Zone," its format keeps the story from developing. The Shirley Jackson-inspired “The Party” is another where the table seems set for something impressive, but it just kind of ends without revealing anything, with its zenith of weirdness something that doesn’t feel like it belongs to this particular story any more than it would if Howard Sturgis had come home to find it. “The Dead Thing” is one of the more traditionally structured and executed stories, but the least fulfilling of them. While some of these works are abandoned prematurely, this one seems to lurch on and on with a young narrator using parentheticals inside parentheticals. The brother/sister dynamic here does offer an interesting parallel to another new collection, “Half the House is Haunted” from Josh Malerman’s Spin a Black Yarn.

The title story of the book is the bigger offender of far exceeding its sell-by date, though. Given that collections famously do not sell well, one marvels that a publisher wanted to release this one with a centerpiece of a free-verse poem/novella involving anthropomorphic animals. It stretches over the course of 60 years, and despite jumping years here and decades there, you begin to feel like you’ve endured all 60. The core concept about a town offering a sacrifice every 30 years to a giant monster is initially entertaining enough, but of course what it’s all “really” about is a political allegory, and the stuff with the monster is mostly background noise. As with most other politically minded writing of this era, nuance is in negative supply. You can recast human characters as animals and break up the lines into verse with some potent turns of phrase, but all it ever feels like is thinly veiled social media posts. There is no great revelation from this. It’s a long drive with a lot of miles, but only around the block, only around the same cul-de-sac…one that he’s already driven to some extent in Cabin at the End of the World and similarly in Survivor Song (as well as in some of the other stories in this book), but here it is in free verse with animals, so totally not the same thing. But of course it is. My political affiliation is the good one, yours is evil. As Bender mocks in The Breakfast Club, “It’s such fun to read.” I envy those who will decide life is too short, mark it DNF, and move on to the next book. I’m too stubborn, determined at a certain point to see it through to the end. I made it, but the feeling was less the sense of accomplishment than gratitude to move on to something hopefully less didactic.

The first half of the collection is uneven but compelling enough. The last half is a test of endurance. Three out of five is the highest I can go. Those who appreciate Tremblay’s style of short stories will probably find much to enjoy here, if less so than Growing Things or In the Mean Time. For myself, I’ll hope The Pallbearers Club is more what I am looking for.

The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay is the first short story collection from this author that I have ever read and it was everything I had dreamed of! I love Tremblay and have only *hated* one of his books before but this was exceptional!

An anthology with a lot of good ideas and okay endings. Except for 'The Last Conversation' which is one of the best short stories that I have ever read. Absolutely phenomenal story that captures a very special kind of dread. I would lovefor that story to have its own novel.

Thank you to netgalley for the review copy!

While I think that Paul Tremblay is an incredibly gifted writer, these stories left me feeling unsatisfied. The author does a great job of weaving together the elements of the a story and creating suspense, but the endings just fell flat for me. I was left just not getting what the endings even meant for the majority of these stories which is not a terrific feeling. I do recommend this title for fans of Tremblay's work and maybe other readers will get more out of it than I did. For my part, I have to say it was not my favorite.

I'm such a fan of Tremblay's, and I really enjoyed this. He's got such an impressive way of just getting under your skin, and so much of this had me on the edge of my seat. Some stories are stronger than others, and the weaker ones are... choppy and feel unfinished. But the ones that are good are really, really good.

[Blurb goes here]

Paul Tremblay has a unique way of getting under your skin, his horror tales will have you looking over your shoulder. The characters are well written, fleshed out, something (I imagine) hard to accomplish when writing short fiction.

While a few of the stories felt incomplete, chopped even. Others make it a worthy journey for the reader. As far as collections go, this one is unique...let me clarify: the author toys with the readers emotions at will. He will make you feel safe and then, in the next couple of paragraphs, he'll give you goose bumps. His imagined threats, all too real.

Needless to say that I'm now looking forward to read more books by Mr. Tremblay.

Thank you for the advanced copy.