Paul tells a story like no other and this is a solid collection of hits. Tremblay will always be a "must read" author.

I was shocked to see I hadn't left a review of this. I love everything that Tremblay writes and this was no exception. A delightful collection of short stories.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this book and to be an early reader via NetGalley! However, I will not be writing a review for this title at this time, as my reading preferences have since changed somewhat. In the event that I decide to review the book in the future, I will make sure to purchase a copy for myself or borrow it from a library. Once again, thank you so much for providing me with early access to this title. I truly appreciate it. Please feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions or concerns.

Solid collection of stories from a great horror author. Tales flirt and mingle with Tremblay’s previous works. Innovative and gripping. Recommend to fans of the author and genre.

A Head Full of Ghosts was my first introduction to Paul Tremblay. Growing Things and Other Stories proves that he is as masterful at the short story as he is novels. I loved the variety of the tales and how enchanting, yet menacing they could be!

My favorite Paul Tremblay book to date! Absolutely recommended to fans Tremblay's work or horror in general.

***Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***
Overall, a frightening, enjoyable bunch of stories. A few were not the best, but I'll always come back for more Paul Tremblay.

Really haunting, incredible stories. I continue to love everything Tremblay puts out.

Personal faves: The Teacher, ————-, Where We All Will Be, and The Ice Tower.

Let me start by thanking the author, the publishing house, and Netgalley for allowing me an electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

I loved "Head Full of Ghosts" and "Cabin at the End of the World". That being said, I liked a some of the stories in this collection. A few I didn't much care for. Perhaps it is that I like to bond with the characters and go through the long journey with them instead of catching a short glimpse.
I very much liked how he tied some of the characters from the books I mentioned earlier into a couple of these stories. There were a few I'd like to see him write a novel about. Like the one with the remote cabin in Canada - "The Barn in the Wild".
Overall, I liked the book and I still very much like the author!

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It is a good collection of some creepy, some unsettling horror short stories. Some of the stories I loved while others were a miss for me; this is on par with how I feel about Paul Tremblay, in general. Some of his books really resonate with me while others just aren't for me. He is always a good writer, however. My favorite story, by far, was "Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport." It was a great, entertaining, interesting story.

Thank you to Netgally and the publisher for my advanced copy of Growing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay. I was so excited to receive this book because I love anything that Tremblay puts out, and Growing Things didn't disappoint. This is a great collections of stories that makes your skin crawl. Tremblay is a master of the horror genre and I recommend anything and everything that he writes to everyone I know. I also loved that the main characters from A Head Full of Ghosts, Merry and Marjorie, return in this book.

Tremblay follows up his 2019 Stoker Award winning novel, "Cabin at the End of the Woods," with a short story collection sure to please those familiar, and not-yet-familiar, with the author's work. Some stories take place in the worlds of existing novels, some poke fun back at the author, others are ambiguously terrifying where the lack of defined outcomes are the scariest of all horrors.

I have been trying to write a review of this collection for days…all I can think of is saying Paul Tremblay’s “gone and done it again” in my best John Doe from Se7en voice. Seriously, this collection is absolutely fantastic. If you’re new to Tremblay you’ll love the huge variety of horror genre tales and if you’re a dedicated fan (a Tremblayniac?) you’ll love catching up with old friends and making new ones.

There is something for everyone in Growing Things and Other Stories, which is book-ended by the titular Growing Things and The Thirteenth Temple both of which feature characters from 2015’s Bram Stoker Award winning novel, Head Full of Ghosts. There is a story for fans of The Thing called The Ice Tower while fans of Hellboy should jump straight to Her Red Right Hand. For Lovecraft fans (especially those of us who attend conventions) there is one of my favorite stories in the collection, It Won’t Go Away, which is followed by the truly bizarre Notes from the Dog Walkers.


If I had to pick my favorite story of the collection it would be a tie between the “choose your own adventure” themed story, A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some are Broken– trust me, you’ll want to go into every room of this house and the haunting Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport. I also really enjoyed reading the author notes at the end of the collection and learning Tremblay’s inspiration for many of the stories included in the collection.

In a time where everyone is trying to look cool on the internet, my fan girl heart is on my sleeve because I can’t say enough good things about this collection. So I will stop here before I start to look real crazy (too late?).

I was really looking forward to this book when I saw it on NetGalley. I've read Paul's work before and really dig it. Unfortunately, I struggled with the majority of the stories here.
But, The Getaway was a fantastic story. The way it was written kept the truth about what was happening well hidden. The story with out a title and Where We All Will Be were also great stories. These two creepy and unsettling in a way that is hard to describe. Overall, I didn't dig enough of this book for me to recommend it.

4.5/5 stars!

Paul Tremblay first appeared on my radar with his book A HEAD OF FULL GHOSTS. Then came DISAPPEARANCE AT DEVIL'S ROCK, which really impressed me. He followed that up with CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD, which broke my heart. Now, here he is with a solid collection of stories that I ADORED.

GROWING THINGS is a hefty volume of tales, mostly told already in other publications, but they were almost all new to me. Among them, these stood out the most:

HER RED RIGHT HAND Something about this tale grabbed my imagination. There is a surprise well known figure comic figure within, but for me it was the young artist drawing the story that affected me the most.

NOTES FROM THE DOG WALKERS seemed like an experimental form of story telling to me, and as such, I was carried along from the normality of the day to day dog walker down into the heart of madness. This tale totally worked for me and I wanted to applaud when I finished.

NINETEEN SNAPSHOTS OF DENNISPORT Here is another story in which the way the tale is related is different and fascinating. Who doesn't sit down with their vacation pictures at some point or another? It's within these types of normal situations where Mr. Tremblay really shines. He takes those normal day to day things and twists them around...it's really something to see.

WHERE WE WILL ALL BE Here we find another experimental tale and once again, it worked quite well. A young man wakes up and finds his parents confused and talking nonsense about how they all have to go "where we will all be." That's all I'm going to say because I don't want to ruin it, but I find myself still thinking about Zane and his family.

THE ICE TOWER I don't know what the heck was going on in this story, at least not for sure, but once again, Mr. Tremblay wove his spell around me, and I was immediately entranced.

A HAUNTED HOUSE IS A WHEEL ON WHICH SOME ARE BROKEN A tour through the home where you grew up with your family. Top that with a "Choose your own adventure" feel and you have this unique tale that turned around within itself and surprised me.

IT WON'T GO AWAY A few days after his brother's suicide, a man receives a letter from the deceased. Once again, the story twists and turns and before you know it, you are miles away from where you started.

I guess I'll leave it off here because I'm discovering that I can go on and on about this collection.

Usually, weird fiction doesn't work that well for me. While I can appreciate and enjoy ambiguous stories, certain authors considered masters of the form leave me a bit cold. (Robert Aickman, I'm looking at you!) I am unsettled by and enjoy the work of Tom Ligotti, but it often comes across as too nihilistic for my tastes. In this volume, Paul Tremblay appears to master the form, but in his own unique and brave style.

That's not to say this collection features only weird tales, because it doesn't. What it does feature is an author willing to experiment with all different types of dark fiction and nearly every one of them was a beauty to behold!

My highest recommendation!

*Thank you to Edelweiss, NetGalley, and to William Morrow for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.*

I read the first three stories and didn’t really like them. This is the first time I’ve read Tremblay. That could be part of my problem with this collection, because several of the stories apparently tie into previous works. I didn’t continue reading after the third story.

I love Paul Tremblay. I’ve red all his work and like it a lot; it is mysterious and ominous and strange. This collection of short stories, however, was just something I could not get into. I think he is better in a long format maybe, or maybe I just am not that in love with short stories. Either way, this was a book I did not finish, I’m sorry to say. I look forward to Mr. Tremblay’s next full length novel.

I have always liked that Tremblay as an author is good at bringing in the ambiguous, and the same can be said for many of the tales in GROWING THINGS. There were plenty of times that the reader has no idea what is happening, either because of the narrator's POV or because the unknown is simply the reality of the story. While I for the most part found things to like about all of the stories, a few really stood out, and as I usually do I'll address my favorite three here.

"A Haunted House Is A Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken": A woman revisits her childhood home, and has to face both the memories of the ghosts inside of it, and the memories of the losses she endured while living there. In a Choose Your Own Adventure Style! While the structure didn't work very well in my digital ARC, I managed to make it work, and at the heart of this tale is not only a creepy set of ghost anecdotes, but also a very sad and emotional story about a girl having to deal with her mother dying. There were multiple moments in this story where I found myself tearing up, and the eeriness mixed with the melancholy in a divine way.

"The Ice Tower": When a group of adventure seeking climbers are brought in to explore a giant, natural, and mysterious ice wall, the elements aren't the only dangers that threaten the team. With clear influence from THE THING and a very upsetting, and yet never explained, climax, this story gave me a serious case of the willies. I'm trying to find more to like about Cosmic horror, and I felt like this one definitely had some otherworldly scares.

"It's Against The Law to Feed the Ducks": A young family goes on vacation to a cabin in the woods, and through the eyes of a young boy we see something, though we aren't sure what, happen to the family and the world that they live in. I had serious flashbacks to THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD from this story, but since it's through the eyes of a little kid we don't know exactly WHAT happened, as his parents are trying to shield it from him. We can piece together that it's something that is probably apocalyptic, but when seen through his eyes it's all the more upsetting because of the lens of innocence that is being applied to it. I loved this story.

There are other great stories in here as well, from a monster in the woods to a revisit to the characters from A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS to manic dog walkers, and even Hellboy makes an appearance! There is a lot to like here, that's for sure.

GROWING THINGS AND OTHER STORIES is a solid horror and dark fantasy collection, and I'm happy that I gave it a try in spite of my hesitation with short stories. Just goes to show that I will probably like most anything that Paul Tremblay comes out with.

Honestly, I'm at the point where Paul Tremblay could write a 100,000 word essay about the importance of telephone books and I'd buy it without any reservations. These stories continue to cement Tremblay's role in horror fiction.

I read this one so fast,I couldn't put it down!.
It kept me reading and reading until I finished it and it was so good.
I enjoyed it so much.
4.5/5 stars