I dnfed this book, it wasn't interesting it was boring and couldn't keep my attention. I didn't care what was happening.

It's difficult to give one clear rating to an anthology - I settled on four stars because some stories absolutely blew me away, and some were a bit lackluster.

Overall, I found this an engaging collection of short stories, and would read more from the author in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this, but especially the second to last (and the longest) story, set in a mall-as-civilization with magic.

Catching up with reviews that have caught up with me. I didn't feel perticuly fond of this, wasn't really the sort of book for me.
Thank you to Netgalley for sending me a free copy to review.

In an attempt to catch up with the reviews I fell behind on in 2020 I am only leaving star rating for the books that I didn't feel incredibly passionate about.

This collection had some very interesting pieces, and I did enjoy my reading experience. But I found the stories felt not fully cooked.

DNF
I didn't enjoy the first few short stories at all, so,I just skimmed the rest. The writing just wasn't for me.

In one story, a perfumer keeps his boyfriend close-at-hand by dosing him with precise measures of poison. In another, a comical domestic drama hinges upon the life and death of an ancient chinchilla.

This was an interesting collection of stories. Scott's writing is simplistic yet captivating. However, some stories bored me a little and did not capture my attention. And I felt myself puzzling over some of them because I did not understand the message the author was trying to convey.
Overall, this was a solid collection.

I try really, really hard to never DNF books, especially those I have review copies for, but after four months of trying to wade through Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day, I think it's going to become the first ARC I've DNFed. However, I would like to note that I'm DNFing more out of personal preference than because I think the book is inherently bad.

I think I might have been able to finish if the collection had been shorter, but, as is, many of the stories, as well as the book itself felt too long to me, at least compared to other short story collections I've enjoyed in the past. Even when I read for fairly large chunks of time, I never seemed to make any progress, which quickly became frustrating and eventually led to me avoiding the book altogether, which is never a good sign.

Rating this 3 stars despite DNF, because the writing overall wasn't bad, and I at least moderately enjoyed most of the stories I read. Some of the writing was brilliant, but other times, it felt clunky and superfluous.

I would be interested in checking out Scott's future writing, especially longer work like novellas or even novels. There were several stories I read in here that I would have been interested in diving further into. I think The Hand That Sews, in particular, was worth exploring further and would make an excellent novella. I still have the collection on my Kindle, so I might return to it at some point and finish, at which point I'll update this review, but to be honest, probably not any time soon.

This is an unbelievably pretentious book that I had to DNF. It quite literally put me to sleep, and didn't read any better after a nap. Although the story premises are interesting, the actual writing is bloated and reminiscent of the worst kind of literature - the sort of thing where old white men write about other old white men having midlife crises or something. Self-indulgent and dull in the worst way.

This book I think have more potential to show more the story and characterization. It is great, quick read, and enjoyable book. It turns out to be a little lacking in terms of details but still a good book.

This is a collection of short stories.
Some of the stories I really enjoyed and others I didn't really understand at all. Some of them seemed to have no clear theme or aim to where the story was going and when they ended, it seemed like it could have been anywhere in the story instead of the end. Almost like it was a snippet of the middle of a story, instead of a complete short story.

However, there were some stories that I really enjoyed. For example 'After the end came the mall, and the mall was everything' was probably my favourite story from the whole collection. It was longer than the others and was very gripping from the start. It was well written and very creative.

Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day is a collection of short stories written by J.D. Scott. There are ten stories in total, each one very different from the last, although there are common themes and topics that recur throughout the collection. Some of the stories are quite short, others are longer. The longest story is 'After The End Came The Mall, And The Mall Was Everything', which in my opinion felt quite different from the other stories in the collection.

Scott has a way with words that really makes this book unique. A way of describing things that makes them feel unreal, even if what is being described is completely normal. And then truly surreal things are woven in. I spent a lot of the time I was reading this book not really knowing where I stood, not knowing for certain what was real and what was metaphorical, or a dream or delusion. The whole book was like a strange dream.

All of the stories have an eerie feeling, a dream like quality. We see humanity in all of its weirdness and mundanity. Human connections and disconnections. Love and loss. Explorations of death. Ghosts and the occult show up in more than one of the story, as well as dreams and delusions. There's even a science fiction fantasy dystopian capitalist society, and a bizarre retelling of the Christian Easter.

My ratings for each story individually are as follows:

The Teenager 3/5

Chinchilla 4/5

The Hand That Sews 5/5

Cross 3/5

Moonflower, Nightshade, All The Hours Of The Day 5/5

Where Parallel Lines Come To Touch 5/5

Night Things 3/5

Their Sons Return Home To Die 4/5

After The End Came The Mall, And The Mall Was Everything 4/5

Fordite Pendant 3/5

My overall rating for this book is 4/5. It's an interesting collection of stories that takes the reader on a dream like experience, and really makes you think. I certainly wouldn't consider it easy reading material! It takes some time and some thinking about, but it is well worth a read.

If you’re into magical realism fueled by hallucinations, this is probably for you. A man going on holiday to get crucified, but he’ll be back when he rises. The future world is entirely built upon a network of never ending shopping malls that constantly change form. A spiritual shaman (or homeless man?) lives in the woods... and he’ll take your shoes. Read it for yourself and see.

I'm really sorry to rate this one so low but it wasn't my cup of tea at all. The writing style is unique but very very confusing. And I think because it is kind of weird there are a lot of people who would enjoy it, unfortunately I am not one of them.
This book is a collection of 10 short stories and every story follows different characters and settings. Though every character has a different conflict that they are dealing with.
Little parts of the book were amazing because some quotes gave me goosebumps but overall I was just confused and not really enjoying it so I stopped after story number 2

3 stars overall; some of these stories struck a perfect balance between fabulism and thematic elements, others felt like they just had nothing to say. Some of these are very strong for a debut author, though, and I'd be curious to pick up another collection by J.D. Scott in the future.

wonderfully poetic and truly heartwarming stories of many different peoples lives. its the sort of book that you want to absorb yourself in on a rainy day.

Sadly I had to dnf this book but it is no way due to the book being bad or badly written in fact I found the writing to be gorgeous and the stories I did read really did evoke alot of emotions for me.

I have just come to realise this will be the final short stories collection I will read/try to read because I can now say they are not for me.

If however you do enjoy short stories I would highly recommend this book as I said the writing is so beautiful and the stories are very deep and somewhat magical or have magical realism.

The ones I read were on the darker side but I still did enjoy and could relate. If this author wrote a novel I would 100% read it and probably love it!

This is a really interesting collection of short stories that lean towards the magical realism genre. The prose is absolutely beautiful, and the metaphors are alluring. It feels like walking through a garden and each word you read is a flower you pick and take the time to smell. Maybe that’s why I took such a long time with this book. Even though most stories were about 10, 20 pages long, I found myself rereading whole paragraphs – sometimes even whole pages.

I couldn’t help but compare the writing to Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle. There was something about the magic in the words that just reminded me of that series.

Even after weeks, I still think about the third story, “The Hand that Sews”. Such a powerful and compelling read! “Chinchilla”, “Cross” , and “Where Parallel Lines Come to Touch” were also delightful.

J. D. Scott is to release a poetry book in 2021 and I’ll definitely look out for that one as well. Thanks to the publisher for granting me an e-ARC of this book through NetGalley!