this was honestly leaning more towards a three star read because the writing style, especially in the first story, just didn't work for me. But, there were a couple stories in this collection that truly hit me in the feels and elevated the book as a whole to four stars.

Do check the warnings as there is a lot of death, and grief is present in all the stories.

this was a collection of very beautiful stories with musings on grief and death. i was absolutely entranced by some and others i found not as engaging. the queer elements were my favourite in each story, especially the story ‘some monuments’ which was my favourite. overall i enjoyed this and would definitely recommend it for short story lovers out there!

I enjoyed this diverse collection of the short stories that read as a mixture of folktale and contemporary fiction. I appreciate the rich culture that most of the characters embody and the vastly different stories that are told throughout the entire collection. Each story is linked to the overall theme of death, so a lot of them have a sorrowful undertone, but there are some surprisingly uplifting stories mixed in the collection.

My personal favorites are Seven Deaths, My Husband and I, Small Monuments, Esther and her VoiceI and the titular The Sea Gives Up the Dead. I like that Olguin shows how both love and death intertwine to form who we are as people and how we interact with one another–her stories were not afraid to show some of the ugliness behind our humanity which makes the characters within all the more relatable. This was a great read for anyone who is looking for a diverse collection of short stories about the intricacies of human interaction, love, and death.

A very well written variety of short stories. Some are darker than others but they are all moving and though provoking in some way. Although I only enjoyed a few of them, this is a very good collection and I will be getting it for my libraries upon publication. 3.75

Molly Olguin's collection of short stories offers a profoundly contemplative journey through the multifaceted nature of mortality. While seventy percent of the narratives resonated immediately, the remaining thirty percent beckon for subsequent readings, their intricate layers demanding deeper exploration and reflection.

What distinguishes this collection is Molly's remarkable ability to transmute death into something simultaneously beautiful and tragic. Her perspective transcends conventional representations, inviting readers to reconsider their understanding of life's inevitable conclusion. The characters emerge as three-dimensional beings whose complexity mirrors our own contradictions and depths.

Each story unfolds with precisely the right pacing, delivering satisfying narrative arcs while several conclusions linger enigmatically in the mind. These ambiguous endings inspire both contemplation and conversation, I find myself eager to revisit them, possibly alongside fellow readers whose interpretations might illuminate new dimensions.

This collection catalyzed significant introspection about my own existence and interpersonal connections. Molly skillfully portrays a diverse spectrum of relationships, avoiding the repetitive patterns that often plague thematic collections. The characters possess such distinctive voices and authentic humanity that beginning each new story felt like a refreshing introduction to an entirely new world.

My favourite stories were
- FOAM ON THE WAVES
- SEVEN DEATHS
- DEVILS ALSO BELIEVE
- THE PRINCESS WANTS FOR COMPANY
- MY HUSBAND AND ME

I would highly recommend this as a book club or buddy read as theres lots to talk about!

Thank you Red Hen Press & NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

A very unique writing style and collection of short stories. While all were well composed, I had a hard time really getting connected and so only ok for me personally.

While I appreciate the arc. I will admittedly be dnf-ing, or not finishing, this book. Given the description, I expected the storytelling to be darker and richer, such as with Poe or the Grimm brothers. However, in my opinion, the writing just felt flat to me from the start and the story I did get through did not seem to provide much emotional or character depth. I also felt like a lot of the dialogue in that first story felt forced and expletive heavy for effect without actually serving a purpose. But I do appreciate the approval and the opportunity to try it nonetheless,

First: check the trigger warnings as this does deal with a lot of death, which is in the title, but one is animal death and the other is death of a child (technically).

This is a weird little collection of stories. They all in some way deal with death, which does not bother me, but there was only one story that I had to completely skip and that was because there is animal death and to me that is triggering. I think I wanted to like this more than I did and that makes me sad since this was my first ARC of 2025 and I really wanted to like it. The final story was my favorite as it dealt with a mermaid and was kind of a Little Mermaid retelling, but darker.

Short stories are such a unique craft that I’ve only really begun to develop a taste for, despite reading many collections of them. Some things that resonate with me as a reader: quick, nuanced development of characters and setting, a plot that feels both complete within and not restrained by the short word count, a memorable “hook” or elevator pitch, and imagery that lingers long after the story is finished.

In all those aspects, this collection handily succeeds.

The writer has clearly worked to hone her craft and each story is polished in a way that reflects that. I will say, they are considerably darker than I expected based on the blurb and description and they deal with some extremely challenging topics — but that difficult subject matter is handled artfully and couched within various forms of magical realism and straight up magic. I do hope the final copy includes content warnings, however.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a dark and somewhat magical look at death, grief, and the worlds they contain.

Thank you to the author and publisher for access to this digital ARC in exchange for my review.

Nice selection of sea stories. I love books and stories involving the sea, islands, lighthouses, etc. This book I enjoyed thoroughly.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this short story collection.

I ended up DNFing it at around 50%, having read the first half of the book along with one of the later short stories. While I am sure some readers will enjoy this book, it's not a good fit for me, and it's not what I expected based on the blurb and cover.

From the blurb, I expected the stories to read more like modern fairy tales in the style of, for example, Angela Carter or Kat Dunn. Some of the stories did show a clear fairy tale inspiration — The Princess Wants for Company, for example, hit a similar note to When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill. Others, however, had at most some faint parallels (e.g. The Undertaker's Dogs).

The tone and writing style has a distinctive American literary flavour to it. I found that it did not match the style of the blurb, with its "stories sprinkled into the soil of fairy tales, left to take root and grow wild there".

Most — but not all — of the stories I read before DNFing were historical and set in North America. There are elements of Latin American magical realism. Major themes include family, relationships, death and social class. There is LGBTQ+ rep, but again, not as much as the blurb's description of a "queer garden" led me to expect.

I think that for the right reader, this could be a very enjoyable book. Personally, I enjoyed some of the concepts the writer played with. Devils Also Believe was one of my personal favourites. However, I don't think any of the stories will stick with me for long.

The writer is clearly talented. The copy is also generally very clean, although there were several Spanish-language errors that I hope the editors will fix prior to publication. (One example was the use of dragónes instead of dragones — dragón should only have an accent mark/tilde in singular, not plural.)

I really enjoyed the writing style on this short story collection!
The stories were all really different but fit well together because of the similar style and themes.
All of the stories were sort of fantasy-fairytale-esque.

a hauntingly beautiful short story collection, The Sea Gives Up The Dead explores themes of family dynamics, love, grief and longing in historical as well as contemporary settings, with a fairytale twist in some. my personal favorite was "the princess wants for company", though i would definitely read a lot of these beautiful stories were they full length novels. will absolutely recommend this!

Short story collections are hard to rate because, as always, some stories resonated with me more than others. Across the board, though, the writing was beautiful and brought a bit of magic to each story. Grief was a recurring theme across the stories, handled each time in a really fascinating, nuanced way.

What a beautifully written book. Such sad subjects but the way they are written is magical. The words flowed from the page and so did my tears! I devoured this in one sitting. Beautiful, thank you.

As someone who normally wouldn’t pick up a short story collection, I really enjoyed this book. I think the length of each story was fitting and it didn’t feel like something was missing from each tale, which was my main issue with previous collections I've read.

As the title suggests, most of the stories deal with death as a main theme in very different and interesting ways. Not all stories were great, but I did like most of them (especially the last one). This book was quite a surprise for me and I was pleased by the experience.

Many thanks to Red Hen Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This review and many others can be viewed on my Goodreads page at the following link: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/80102102-ana