Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror
I adore the premise of this collection of short stories about vacations gone wrong. It's satisfying and terrifying. I love Samantha Kolesnik and was excited to see what she scooped up for this compilation. Samantha was also kind enough to send me a signed copy of this book!
The stories are consistent in their writing quality and varied in their stories. Each one drew me in, but under half of them stuck with me as real showstoppers. The ones I liked the best were as follows:
"Summers with Annie" by Greg Sisco - This was such an interesting one. It was a sorrowful embrace of surrealism as real life got pulled into a single, specific movie.
"Unkindly Girls" by Hailey Piper - What a great story. It captured the feeling of summer vacation with an overbearing father, then turned the whole thing on its head to shock you completely.
"Peelings" by Kenzie Jennings - A story about being a parent at the "happiest place on Earth" and being stripped of yourself, forgotten, and left behind. A great metaphor for the change in dynamic between spouses when children come into the picture.
"Taylor Family Vacation '93" - This one terrified me. It brought a feeling of invasion with a sense of deep and meaningful loss that left me reeling.
"In the Water" by Mark Wheaton - A wild premise that really blew my mind. Something between psychedelic cannibalism and a simple biological process.
The quality is here and I was certainly entertained throughout the whole book. I'm going to check out the movie that came out based on these stories very soon to follow this reading!
