Green Frog - Gina Chung - ★★★★.¼

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AUTHOR: Gina Chung
GENRE: Short Story Collection, Speculative Fiction.
PUBLICATION DATE: March 12, 2024
RATING: 4.15 stars.


In a Nutshell: An astounding collection of speculative fiction with some diverse female characters. Infused with a strong Korean flavour, but with situations and emotions that are universal. A fabulous OwnVoices option for short story lovers, especially those with a fondness for speculative fiction.


This collection of fifteen stories comes with no author’s note. However, the blurb helps us know that this collection of “offbeat, scintillating stories influenced by Korean fairy tales and contemporary ennui, shines a light on womanhood in all of its human (and other) forms.” An intriguing and ambitious theme, met almost perfectly by the stories, which come from varied genres such as speculative fiction, contemporary drama, fantasy, folk lore, and sci-fi.

The author’s imagination is powerful, as is her exploration of emotions. There’s a sense of poignancy underlying most of the stories, though not all the tales are morose. Each of the narratives covers a tangled relationship.

What makes the stories distinct is the approach and the main character. The narrator in the tales covers a diverse spectrum of females, such as a twelve-year-old girl, a mother, a daughter, a kumiho, and even a female praying mantis. The narrative styles are also distinct, with the tales being explored in first person singular, first person plural, second person and third person. Each story felt so fresh and so individual that I never felt any kind of déjà vu while going through this work.

Quite often, an anthology/story collection begins quite strong and then starts getting either dragged or repetitive. This time though, the start of the book was relatively okay for me, partly because of the ‘slice of life’ storytelling style. As I began to wonder if this book would take a nosedive, the stories took a strong turn upwards, and stayed there right till the end. I am so glad I persisted, because this ended up being one of the most creative anthologies I have read this year.

The endings are mostly satisfying, but more importantly, they make perfect sense for their respective storylines without feeling forced. Only a couple of the endings felt abrupt to me.

As always, I rated the stories individually, Of the fifteen stories, a whopping eleven stories reached or crossed the 4 star mark. The remaining four stories scored 3.5 stars. What a performance!

As I don’t want to pen a lengthy list of top rankers, here are my favourites, with 4.5+ stars:

🐸 Rabbit Heart - Generational complexities explored in this poignant tale about parental connections. Love how it handles emotions. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

🐸 Human Hearts - A story of revenge and love and human hearts and not-so-human hearts, made all the more special by the narrator, a kumiho (the nine-tailed fox from Japanese mythology.) - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

🐸 Mantis - A love story gone wrong. What's special about that, you ask? The narrator is a female praying mantis. 😉 I always love atypical narrators when voiced right. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🐸 Attachment Processes - Don't want to reveal any content spoilers about this one, but it has a thought-provoking concept that generates awe, sadness and apprehension all at once. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

🐸 The Arrow - A poignant story in second person, about how a life-altering event changes a relationship. Love the exploration of emotions in this bittersweet narrative. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

🐸 The Fruits of Sin - Remember the biblical verse, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"? This is a beautiful representation of the practical side of that thought. Loved this to the core! - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐


Overall, this OwnVoices story collection began as good but ended up outstanding. It will be one of my favourite story collections of 2024.

Strongly recommended to all short story lovers who love to read tales blending reality and fantasy. Don’t expect the typical in these tales, and you will be pleasantly surprised.

4.15 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each tale. (If you are familiar with my ratings, you know that an average that goes to 4 stars and beyond is outstanding for an anthology.)

My thanks to Pan Macmillan, Picador, and NetGalley for the DRC of “Green Frog”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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