The Canine Collection by Laura Shell

The Canine Collection is a bundle of short horror stories with a supernatural element and all involving a dog or two It runs the gamut of alcohol and domestic abuse leading to violence and a lifechanging discovery, to wishes (even when for good) having consequences, to vampires making choices, to shapeshifters protecting those they love.

 

The author’s writing style is very easy to read and she has a lovely flow where you are involved in the story and then she throws a twist that makes you pause and possibly reread a line. But in a good way. What did trip up the story were the punctuation errors like missing quotation marks or lowercase words meant to be capped or full stops that should have been commas. Even phrases like vice versa were mixed up and made visa versa. These things make me pause in a bad way! Not to mention that the chapters in the first story were all out of whack and had me confused. I wish each story had started with a title too as it went directly from the last chapter of the previous story to chapter one of the next and you weren’t sure if it was a numbering error. It seems the edition sent for the Reedsy review was not the one uploaded for publishing.

 

Immortal Me has a great parallel storyline to it in the question of whether a domestic abuser will ever change his spots. In Jinn or Jinx? I wish the dog had had a bigger role but I loved Eric’s wishes and the way he saw the world. In My Sister’s Keeper there is almost a punishment Emma gets for the choice she makes, but the underlying reason of sacrifice is very sad. I didn’t agree with the synopsis for the story as the “turning” was not really the concern. In The Shape of the Shift the canine is not what you expect and there was a question in there I would have loved an answer to.

 

The collection is good and the ideas work well as short stories as they are punchy and able to offer a packed plot. With extra editing, this would be a great afternoon read.

Thanks to Reedsy Discovery and the author for the opportunity to review the book.