Silverweed Road - Simon Crook

Author: Simon Crook

Genre: Horror Anthology

Rating: 3.8 stars

In a Nutshell: The perfect anthology to read during Halloween. A collection of creepy horror stories that span a variety of scary themes. Loved it!

Horror as a genre can span so many elements. You have splatterpunk, atmospheric, paranormal, gothic, psychological, zombie, vampire,… even comedy! How much you enjoy a horror story depends entirely on which horror theme works best with you. For me, gory splatterpunk NEVER works. The rest still have a fair chance at clicking, depending on how the story is written. But what almost always works for me is atmospheric and gothic horror. This collection has a majority of stories from the categories I enjoy. No wonder then that it clicked so well!

This anthology contains ten stories, all of which are set on the fictional ‘Silverweed Road’ that suddenly became a hub of unsolved crimes in 2019. Former Detective Chief Inspector Jim Heath handled those investigations, and five years hence, is still brooding over what might have happened. The anthology thus uses Heath’s thoughts as a unifying mechanism across the tales.

Silverweed Road is supposedly a quiet J-shaped cul-de-sac of 41 mock-Tudor semis, built in the 1950s, and bordering the woods. Thus it provides the perfect location to every tale. It did seem farfetched to me that so many paranormal events happened within the same year and on the same road, but the last story explains the reason for this. (As a creature of logic, I like valid reasons, even if the reason is paranormal! 😄)

The prologue contains Heath’s introduction to the weird occurrences on Silverweed road in 2019, then we have a horror story, a blog entry containing Heath’s thoughts on that particular incident, another story, and so on… I enjoyed this innovative presentation. It ensured a thread of commonality across the disparate events, and showed the official confusion over those inexplicable happenings. Moreover, Heath, being the ignorant outsider, doesn’t know what actually happened and can only take a stab at a reasonable justification, unlike we the readers who are privy to the story before reading his blog and thus understand his befuddlement well.

I have read a few horror anthologies by now and in almost all of them, a common factor is repetition. After a point, you start getting a feeling of déjà vu because the pattern and dominant style remain the same, even if it is a multi-author anthology. To my great surprise, every single story in this book is distinct from each other in that each uses a different horror element. This is even more remarkable as it is a single-author anthology. Author Simon Crook has me astounded at his wild and weird imagination! (I mean that as the most sincere compliment!)

The stories are independent, though elements and characters from a few make their appearance in other tales, the jackdaw being the most common participant in the proceedings. Reading a Kindle copy was helpful because the events aren’t linear. So it was easier to look up house numbers and events using the search option.

As always, I rated the stories individually, and of the ten stories, a whopping seven stories reached or crossed the 4 star mark for me. The remaining three were also good, impartially speaking, but two of those were too gory to be my cup of tea and one was just too wacko.

Here are my top three favourites, all with 5 star ratings:

• The Pool – A classic atmospheric horror, where all elements come together in perfect unison, build up the fear factor gradually, and deliver a stunning climax.
• Cuttlefish Cuttlefish – Oh. My. God!! I am never going to look at cuttlefish the same way again! I adored the concept and the implementation.
• Dust - Who doesn't love a vengeful ghost! Loved every minute of this story, even when it became tough for me to breathe because of all the dust! 😛

The blurb describes this collection as “fun British suburban horror at its best”. I confess, I didn’t see any fun in the proceedings, probably because my sense of humour is wired differently. But it does justice to the claim of having the best suburban horror. Definitely recommended – this is one of the best anthologies I’ve read this year.

3.8 stars, based on the average of my rating for each story. (If I discount my rating for the 2 gory stories I didn’t enjoy, the average is a cool 4.4 stars!)

Trigger Warnings: Well, in horror books, trigger warnings are meaningless because if you want a book without severe triggers, horror isn’t the genre for you. But there’s one thing I want to specifically mention here. Animal torture is quite common in horror stories, probably because many authors take it as a lazy way out of adding to the ‘ick’ factor. In this collection, not a single story has any extreme animal torture (though one pet owner deserved a whack for his treatment of his cat – he did get his comeuppance, so all’s well that ends well.). It goes to show how good horror can be written without mutilating poor animals. Other horror writers, please take note!

My thanks to HarperCollins UK, HarperVoyager, and NetGalley for the DRC of “Silverweed Road”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.