Reviews have been posted on Goodreads and StoryGraph as of 1/9/24. Review will be posted to Amazon on release date.

What a delightful collection of short stories! Nethercott has managed to take the magical nature of the fairy tales we’ve grown up reading and imbue it with the modern horrors we face. The collection starts out strong with Sundown at the Eternal Staircase that leaves you filled with longing and dread and from there on out you aren’t given a chance to catch your breath. My favorite pieces in the collection were Shndown at the Eternal Staircase, Drowning Lessons, Dear Henrietta, and Homebody.
I look forward to seeing what else Nethercott releases into the world.

Part short story anthology, part bestiary. This book was quite experimental in format and very literary/academic in content.

The writing, itself, is very competent and composed. But reading this book is best approached as an intellectual endeavor. While I did enjoy some of the stories, others were just too esoteric. There was some good social commentary that I managed to parse out, but I'm pretty sure there was much more that went over my head.

Slow. Thought provoking. And strange, in an unsettling sort of way.

“You can’t really be angry with someone without loving them first.”

“Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart” by GennaRose Nethercott is a collection of macabre short stories with poetic touches. I liked most of them and only thought a few were a bit boring. They were unique and interesting to read about. The whole time I was thinking about where the supernatural touch to the story is true or not which made it feel a little bit like a mystery to me. It was worth reading. 4 out of 5 stars.

**I was provided an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.**

GennaRose Nethercott returns with a short story collection, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart and Other Stories. The collection is comprised of stories that lean into the lines between fantasy and horror with a folk story feeling that presides throughout. There are fourteen total tales included.

If you know GennaRose Nethercott from Thistlefoot, like I did, know that this is not the same vibe. What is the same is Nethercott's beautiful prose that spans each story. This collection leans heavily into the strange, the weird, the wonderful. Unfortunately for me, the sheer oddity of some of the stories makes it hard for me to connect with them. While I recognize the beauty, I believe this is a cade of simply not being for me.

If you are a Slewfoot fan or a little more into the absurd and odd, this collection is more likely to be toward your wheelhouse.

I do not think I could choose my favorite from Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart! GennaRose Nethercott's collection of short stories is mind-bending, beautiful, and provoking. I don't know how Nethercott was able to build imaginative worlds in a few pages!

My top were the Eternal Staircase, The Autumn Kill and A Lily is a Lily.

Some of my fav quotes:
Drowning Lessions - Maybe this is the difference between want and yearn: Want can be flipped on and off like a fuse. Want can be indulged in or set aside. Yearn is something else. You can hear it in the shape of the word.

The Autumn Kill = They made me chant the song a spine sings when it breaks. Little lullaby. Then they married me to the Hunter’s Moon, and I wore a wolf-jaw crown. I braided sinew into my hair. Our wedding bed was built of talons and blood and grease.

Homebody - You’ve seen it before— women becoming houses. A girl you roomed with in college is now a lovely Victorian cottage with scalloped trim. Your Aunt Livia transformed halfway into a Gothic revival with a mansard roof before recovering and moving to Barbados instead. Knuckles traded for polished mahogany balustrades, eyes brimming with thick wooden sills, shutters swinging from shoulder blades like rigid wings. Sometimes it happens slowly. Sometimes all at once.

I'm of two minds with this book. Some of the stories I enjoyed, some I found tedious and overly complicated, like something I would have read in college and been bored to tears by. Overall, I enjoyed most of the stories, there were just a few that I didn't vibe with. And that's okay. Not every book is for every reader. If you like weird, modern fairy tales with a strong literary bent, you might give this collection a try.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Well! I do not know who this book is for as a general point, but I thought for the most part, these short stories were fantastic as a collection. I do not understand how someone can come up with this stuff because there was never a time where I could confidently predict any conclusion. Goat girl and a vampire as cohabitating friends after retirement from the circus show? Neverending staircase keeper as a summer job plus romance? A woman literally turning into a house due to her horrible gaslighting boyfriend? Drowning as a health disorder, however many times, including in the rain? What was this?! I do not have the answers but I love how different this book was from the books piling up on my TBR shelf (haven't read them yet but it's safe to assume). I don't know, I'm either scared of this author or want to become (his/her/their insert proper pronoun I've done no research) best friend?

Strangely, the least interesting was the title story, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart. Great book title, but comparatively speaking, the least engrossing. Maybe 25 beasts? 20? There was obviously a lot of thought and (art)work that went into it, but there was definitely a different overall feeling and pace for it to compose the what seemed like the largest and longest story of the book.

Thanks to Netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for this honest review.

This was so weird, and depraved, and whimsical, and profound - all in the best possible ways. Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Love Stories is a collection of short stories featuring bizarre and thought provoking short stories. If you enjoyed the writing of Thistlefoot, especially the chapters from the perspective of the house, you're going to love these.

Each of the stories are entirely separate, so you could definitely read them all at once, or in small bursts. I think different stories will resonate differently with each reader, but I know a few will stick with me for a long time, specifically: The Thread Boy, The War of Fog, and A Diviner's Abecedarian.

While the Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart section was cool, I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was condensed to about half the length, but if you're reading this as a physical book, I bet the illustrations are just so cool. They just didn't translate great onto my Kindle.

I was a GennaRose Nethercott fan after Thistlefoot, but now she'll be a must-read author for me! I'm immensely grateful to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor for granting me access to an ARC!

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart is GennaRose Nethercott’s follow up to her brilliant novel, Thistlefoot, one of my all time favorite novels. This time, she presents us with a short story collection that proves Thistlefoot was no fluke.

The stories in Fifty Beasts are all gorgeously written, and vary not only in style but in their degree of weirdness. Especially arresting for me were the title story in which the reader literally meets a group of bizarre creatures, all part of a slowly evolving story., and Drowning Lessons, in which we meet a young girl who’s drowned 39: times in her life before we meet her (I can’t say anymore without mentioning spoilers). Unlike other short story collections, there wasn’t a weak story in the book.

Highly recommended.

My thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of the book.

I was really disappointed in this book especially after loving Nethercott's previous novel "Thistlefoot" which was 5 stars. I don't normally go in for short story collections but because I so loved her previous work I decided to check this collection out.

I think Nethercott is a fantastic writer and is so good at depicting in the weird and fantastical this book just took it a little too far.

The stories don't have anything tethering them to the tangible if that makes sense. They're weird, fairytale adjacent and then they just end. Sometimes it felt like they ended in the middle of a sentence. They were weird just for the sake of being weird. Eventually the reader needs some sort of payoff in what their reading, something definite. I did like a few of the stories and the writing was beautiful. I probably won't check out another short story collection by this author but if Nethercott publishes another novel I will definitely read.

I was provided a free copy of this book through NetGalley.

Beautifully written gothic fairytale horror. These short stories pack a punch. They are strange, quirky and weird, which I loved. Some were more hard hitting for me than others but that’s the nature of a collection of short stories. I loved some of the language used, words like abominations, ravenous, churning and monstrous are peppered throughout. There’s also some great illustrations which are disturbing. If you fancy something a bit dark and imaginative then I would recommend this. Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor for an E-ARC. This is a voluntary review of my own thoughts.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this collection! Nethercott has such a skill for getting under your skin and making you feel the transformations her characters undergo. The concepts of metamorphosis and monstrosity are thoroughly explored in delicious variety. I didn't read this book so much as consumed it, and was in turn consumed by it. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for an irresistible path to the strange and unusual.

I unfortunately had to DNF. I was not enjoying this as much as I thought I would. Maybe I’ll revisit the story, but for right now I have to put it down.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I am beyond thankful to Vintage Books, Netgalley, and GennaRose Netherscott for granting me advanced digital and physical access to this wonderfully mysterious collection of short stories and lists of creatures and monsters that will utterly shatter your heart. This book hits shelves on February 6, 2024 and I can’t wait for the hype to come!

Imagine every terrifying trope you could ever imagine and you’ll see that transform here in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart. Readers will experience haunted houses, body gore and horror, manipulative friend groups, murder and more, and just wait until you get to the mid-100-page mark, you’ll be transported into a world of beasts and their monstrous illustrative companions.

I absolutely ate this one up and was hurriedly looking for dessert to satiate my need. I now have to go back and consume all the work Netherscott has written to scratch that itch.

I'm usually not a short story person because they leave me feeling empty and unsatisfied, but Nethercott packs so much detail and emotion into her beautifully-crafted prose. Each work felt brief but complete.

This collection of dark fairy tales is wonderfully weird! If you enjoyed the author’s novel Thistlefoot, it’s a safe bet you’ll enjoy this title too. You will visit an array of unusual places populated with strange characters, but you may feel more at home there than expected. Although I have never encountered a goat woman, I have certainly witnessed the way society can villainize and ostracize those who are different. This collection is full of instances like this, both strange and familiar.

I very much enjoyed the writing style. It has this dark almost whimsical feel that creates a very distinct atmosphere while reading.

The stories all feel a little mysterious and for many of them I was really excited to see how it would end. The stories make you reflect on real-life things while also leaning very heavily into the fantastical. They're weird, dark, spooky.

However, I often felt like there was something missing. I just wanted something more. I had a hard time really caring about the stories because it's so vague at times. I wasn't really invested. Some stories were really strong and those made me want to keep reading. But, unfortunately, many fell flat.

I absolutely loved this short story collection - and it reminded me of so many of the reasons why I love short story collections in the first place! Short stories can be a bit hit or miss: they're always going to be less defined than a novel, so I think readers need to be comfortable with some level of abstract narrative to enjoy them, but they also still need to paint *enough* of a picture that the reader understands the story being told by the end of it.

Personally, I thought Nethercott absolutely *shone* in this collection and I loved the balance she struck between building worlds (sometimes even interconnected ones) and leaving some amount of interpretation up to the reader. Short stories can be a great exercise in reading comprehension because often the smallest details help tie up the narrative, so if you're skimming instead of really taking in the story, you'll often miss out on the key details that lead to that satisfied feeling at the end of the story. As Nethercott writes in the story of the vampire and the goat-girl, "As half-storied creatures themselves, they knew no weapon this powerful could be introduced to a tale without eventually being weilded" - every detail counts and Nethercott knows not to introduce a gun in act 1 without firing it in act 3. Although she often finds some unique way to fire it! Truly the mark of a masterful short story writer.

This collection absolutely scratched my itch for slightly weird, folklore-inspired but still fresh and new stories that felt like they could have come from some long story telling tradition even if they're Nethercott's creation. I can't wait to own a physical copy of this collection as well as gift it to some of my friends!

Thank you to Vintage Anchor and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

GennaRose Nethercott's Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart has a surrealist quality about the writing that is engaging, particularly in the earlier stories, but can start to feel a little one note toward the end.

Engaging theme of love, loss, and identity, Nethercott's lyricism becomes almost hypnotic, even when, as the title promises, your heart breaks.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Short story collections can be tricky to pull off. Do they all have the same theme? Are they all wildly different? Do they all share an idea, but take it in opposite directions? With Fifity Beasts to Break Your Heart, some of the stories were perfect glimpses into the creepy, the absurd, and the ache of the ugly parts of living. Others seemed to fall a little short of the mark.

Sundown at the Eternal Staircase reminded me of "Welcome to Nightvale" in its portrayal of weird events as a fact of life. A Diviner's Abecedarian gave us hints of every high school horror movie. Thread Boy felt the most real, in how we give pieces of ourselves to others or leave them behind in places we have gone, and if we're not careful, we can become so entangled in these webs that we lose ourselves. The War of Fog is every creeping gothic folk tale, where we know something is coming, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is going to be. Drowning Lessons is a glimpse at how things we take for granted aren't necessarily available for everyone to enjoy. These were the stories that resonated with me out of all of this collection. Some of the other stories may resonate with someone else.

If you are a fan of the surreal, open-ended stories, creeping unease, and harsh reflections on life, there is something here for you. Fifity Beasts to Break Your Heart has enough hidden in its pages to make this book worth picking up.