It took me a while to get through this. I agree with others, I felt the collection wasn't nearly as curated as it could have been and some of the stories lacked fullness. But, I also love supporting queer art, hence the 3 stars.

I really liked the concept of this anthology, which aims to draw out the latent queer themes in horror, as the introduction explains in more detail. The stories themselves are a mixed bag of retellings and reworkings of mythology, folklore and other horror archetypes. We get lesbian werewolves (we love to see it!), an influencer minotaur, a modern Medusa and Frankenstein. Some of the stories were funny, others were sad (The Vetala's Song especially), a few were genuinely disturbing (Nature's Mistake). One I had to skip entirely, though that's down to my own squemishness rather than the story itself (I'm sorry, Hiromi Goto!). I will say, the slightly cartoonish cover art lulled me into a false sense of security, so the darker stories took me by surprise. Some of the stories' protagonists and denouments are pretty horrible, though not necessarily supernatural. I particularly liked a story about a non-binary character experimenting with new cyborg-like technology, for example (Glamour Us), which felt like an episode of Black Mirror. I also liked Ghosts of Pride, which harks back on queer history with a Dickensian twist, and Gruesome My Love, which juxtaposes homophobic perceived monstrosity with literal monstrosity in a story about a woman whose family and friends reject her for dating a world-devouring eldritch abomination.

The diversity of the collection is another of its strengths; apart from the range of monsters, horror, sci-fi and fantasy tropes invoked, it includes a mix of poetry and prose, explores various queer identities and experiences and features writers and characters of different genders, sexualities, racial identities and ages (it skews young, but includes at least one middle aged protagonist).

Unfortunately, though I loved the concept, I wanted to like it more than I did. I struggled to maintain interest between the stories/poems, perhaps because I inevitably liked some more than others. That may be an issue with my attention span rather than the collection, though. It took me a while to finish but, in fairness, as an anthology, the stories don't have to be read consecutively or all at once. That said, a few of the stories felt a little too simple, while others did a great job of making connections between old tropes and modern (queer) experiences; I liked the story about a sociopathic influencer and her thralls, for example (Like Me).

I'd also say that while the narrator of the audiobook, Danielle Verayo, does a great job, it might have been nice to have more than one narrator for all the different stories to reflect the variety of characters. Still, I'd recommend Queer Little Nightmares overall to readers looking for self-aware queer stories on fantasy horror themes. As an anthology, it's a great way to discover new writers, and I'll definitely be checking out some of the contributors' other work!

(I received a free copy of this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, so thank you NetGalley and thank you ECW Press Audio!)

Queer Little Nightmares is an anthology of stories that personifies queerness in unique ways. I thoroughly enjoyed the anthology, I thought it flowed better than many anthologies and the audiobook was fantastic. As a legally blind person some audiobooks aren't enjoyable sped up and for me that's how I am able to hold my attention with audiobooks. This one was fantastic at normal speed and every speed in between. I listened to at all different speeds and the audiobook narrarator did a great job with keeping it enjoyable at all speeds.

The stories were diverse and the Queer imaginings of mythology and folklore was fun and refreshing. I enjoyed the fact that there was poetry and short stories since a lot of anthologies do not include both, it was especially great on audio to break up some of the larger stories. Overall it was a solid collection and I have sought out some of the authors of the stories to continue to find more by those authors outside the anthology. Would love to see more anthologies like this.

Queer Little Nightmares is, like all short story collections, a very mixed bag. I'm a huge queer horror fan, and would definitely recommend this book to others, with the usual collection caveats. A highlight for me, however, was the Vetala story - it's rare to find a short story that injects so much emotion and makes you *feel* it in the brief amount of time it has you for, but this story did it.

The narrator was also a highlight! They have a brilliant range which fully covered the varied stories and poems in this collection, with an engaging tone that kept me hooked even if I wasn't a huge fan of the individual stories.

Loved this collection of queer horror! Some were more my vibe than others but overall loved it and would recommend

Some of these stories stuck with me and some didn’t. A little bit of creepy ness and a lot of gayness is what everyone needs. The narrator was great too. Definitely worth picking up if you want something spooky!

An intriguing and exciting collection of short stories and poems with a sci-fi twist. An exploration of queerness across a variety of formats with some stories standing out more than others.

I felt like a lot of the stories in here were either hit or miss for me; I either enjoyed them or really didn't get into it. Some of them were really interesting concepts and well-written, but others were hard to follow or unnecessarily graphic.

*2.5 stars*. I was really hoping for more a horror vibe with this book. Some of the stories hit the mark but most were just not intriguing. If you're just venturing into Queer Horror then I would recommend but if you are well versed I would pass.

This anthology of queer stories was the fresh of breath air that I needed. it made me laugh, cry, cheer on the hero's when they get what they want, and the villains when they lose.

This was a wonderful fresh anthology of stories with great authors.

I was so excited to read Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Montrous Fiction and Poetry edited by David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli because it features two authors I’ve loved before David Ly and Eddy Boudel Tan and I love queer CanLit short stories and poetry! I loved this book! The narrator of the audiobook Danielle Verayo did an excellent job. I was engaged the whole time and I really liked the format that alternated between poetry and fiction. I especially loved the mentions of Vancouver including International Village, Commodore Ballroom and Davie Street. I enjoyed all the writing and my faves were #WWMD? by jaye simpson and Ghosts of Pride Past by Cicely Belle Blain which are both set in Vancouver.

Thank you to ECW Press Audio via NetGalley for my ALC!

This was a really fun anthology of queer fantasy/horror stories. The way many of the authors embraced the monster-as-stand-in-for-queer trope felt really empowered. I loved the mix of prose and poetry and the varying lengths of the pieces as it kept the collection moving quickly.

This was so creepy, wacky and bizarre in the best way possible. A totally unique concept and I feel like it will be well loved and received by a very niche group of people who are both queer and macabre loving. I don’t have an obsession with horror, gore and all things strange but I could still appreciate this as it was.

4.5 stars

I adored the project of this anthology and was so intrigued by how it collected queer stories embodying monsters and creatures as a mode of storytelling. There was such a diverse range of voices in here and some of the stories are going to stick with me forever. As much as I loved what it was setting out to do, I do not know if the combination of fiction and poetry was effective. I am a poetry person—I read it and write it and consume poetry all the time—but I found myself enjoying the fiction a lot more. I personally think that monster narratives work better when they are fiction or long-form poetry because it is more impactful when readers are given time to sit with characters. I am still going to buy my own copy though and check out a bunch of these contributors. Thank you for the ARC!

Thank you NetGalley for my audio version. This was a brilliant collection of queer horror/fantasy. As always with collections I preferred some to others, but they were all interesting and provocative. I would recommend 100%. The narration was great. Although as the same person narrated each story, it was sometimes hard to connect to the mc to begin with.

This is right up my alley. Bite-sized (novella/short story length) monster stories that explore all types of queer dynamics. I can’t decide on my favorite, and I really enjoy the narration.

I love the idea of this collection but I couldn’t get into it. I thought the narrator was pretty good. I think it was a missed opportunity not to release this around Halloween!

I absolutely loved this anthology with all the Queer spooky in it.
I was very impressed with each work, the short stories & the Poetry. Some were cute, some weird disgusting & some were just weird (but in the best way. )

I don't know how well this translated audiobook If only because there's a mix of poetry and short stories and if you're not paying attention you totally miss the poetry cuz it's there and gone. This isn't a bad book but I don't think it was for me. If you're into kind of semi speculative fiction alongside twisty horror vibe stories, you're probably going to like it. It was just a bit too weird for me.

Narrator was adequate. Read well enough but did not give none of the characters in the short stories nuance or difference. Although that might have been as much the material as anything else. It was noticeable that she did better with the first short story which did have some characterisation.

Honestly this was a pretty mediocre collection. When you have an anthology that contains stories by multiple authors, you're always going to find a couple of lemons, or at least ones you don't care for. In this collection there were two I quite liked (in comparison to the others), a couple that were gratuitously gross and full of body horror without any real supporting story, and the rest were meh. None of them even seemed to flirt with the idea of having a beginning, a middle and an end, and all too often the characters were paper dolls for the authors to shout polemic through. Which was tedious.



I'm also weary of queer short stories always seeming to have to focus exclusively on queer issues - coming out, homophobia, oppression - as the main thrust of the story. It's not that those issues are not worth discussing, but when I pick up an anthology of queer horror, I want the horror to be predominant, I want great characters and I want the politics to be window dressing OR - an here's a thought - entirely absent. Not because it's not important but because LGBTQIAP+ people deserve stories that depict them as the MCs without the story having to import homophobia. Are we seriously saying that stories featuring queer oppression are the only ones we're allowed to tell? Because that seems weirdly homophobic in its own right.



And the poetry... The poetry was not great. The best poem was The Creation of Eve, but there were others like Godzilla and Creature from Another Lagoon that did mostly work. The rest seemed to be written by people who don't know what poetry structure is before they attempted to break it. I'm not a fan of tumblr meme style verse where hitting the return bar excessively equals a poem.

I quite liked the first short story. Also, props to Glamour Us for having the balls to tackle inter community prejudice and absolutism within trans ideology.

Overall though this was a bit lacklustre. Do not recommend.