I was really disappointed in this book especially after loving Nethercott's previous novel "Thistlefoot" which was 5 stars. I don't normally go in for short story collections but because I so loved her previous work I decided to check this collection out.

I think Nethercott is a fantastic writer and is so good at depicting in the weird and fantastical this book just took it a little too far.

The stories don't have anything tethering them to the tangible if that makes sense. They're weird, fairytale adjacent and then they just end. Sometimes it felt like they ended in the middle of a sentence. They were weird just for the sake of being weird. Eventually the reader needs some sort of payoff in what their reading, something definite. I did like a few of the stories and the writing was beautiful. I probably won't check out another short story collection by this author but if Nethercott publishes another novel I will definitely read.

I was provided a free copy of this book through NetGalley.

Beautifully written gothic fairytale horror. These short stories pack a punch. They are strange, quirky and weird, which I loved. Some were more hard hitting for me than others but that’s the nature of a collection of short stories. I loved some of the language used, words like abominations, ravenous, churning and monstrous are peppered throughout. There’s also some great illustrations which are disturbing. If you fancy something a bit dark and imaginative then I would recommend this. Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Anchor for an E-ARC. This is a voluntary review of my own thoughts.

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

I loved this collection! Nethercott has such a skill for getting under your skin and making you feel the transformations her characters undergo. The concepts of metamorphosis and monstrosity are thoroughly explored in delicious variety. I didn't read this book so much as consumed it, and was in turn consumed by it. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for an irresistible path to the strange and unusual.

I unfortunately had to DNF. I was not enjoying this as much as I thought I would. Maybe I’ll revisit the story, but for right now I have to put it down.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I am beyond thankful to Vintage Books, Netgalley, and GennaRose Netherscott for granting me advanced digital and physical access to this wonderfully mysterious collection of short stories and lists of creatures and monsters that will utterly shatter your heart. This book hits shelves on February 6, 2024 and I can’t wait for the hype to come!

Imagine every terrifying trope you could ever imagine and you’ll see that transform here in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart. Readers will experience haunted houses, body gore and horror, manipulative friend groups, murder and more, and just wait until you get to the mid-100-page mark, you’ll be transported into a world of beasts and their monstrous illustrative companions.

I absolutely ate this one up and was hurriedly looking for dessert to satiate my need. I now have to go back and consume all the work Netherscott has written to scratch that itch.

I'm usually not a short story person because they leave me feeling empty and unsatisfied, but Nethercott packs so much detail and emotion into her beautifully-crafted prose. Each work felt brief but complete.

This collection of dark fairy tales is wonderfully weird! If you enjoyed the author’s novel Thistlefoot, it’s a safe bet you’ll enjoy this title too. You will visit an array of unusual places populated with strange characters, but you may feel more at home there than expected. Although I have never encountered a goat woman, I have certainly witnessed the way society can villainize and ostracize those who are different. This collection is full of instances like this, both strange and familiar.

I very much enjoyed the writing style. It has this dark almost whimsical feel that creates a very distinct atmosphere while reading.

The stories all feel a little mysterious and for many of them I was really excited to see how it would end. The stories make you reflect on real-life things while also leaning very heavily into the fantastical. They're weird, dark, spooky.

However, I often felt like there was something missing. I just wanted something more. I had a hard time really caring about the stories because it's so vague at times. I wasn't really invested. Some stories were really strong and those made me want to keep reading. But, unfortunately, many fell flat.

I absolutely loved this short story collection - and it reminded me of so many of the reasons why I love short story collections in the first place! Short stories can be a bit hit or miss: they're always going to be less defined than a novel, so I think readers need to be comfortable with some level of abstract narrative to enjoy them, but they also still need to paint *enough* of a picture that the reader understands the story being told by the end of it.

Personally, I thought Nethercott absolutely *shone* in this collection and I loved the balance she struck between building worlds (sometimes even interconnected ones) and leaving some amount of interpretation up to the reader. Short stories can be a great exercise in reading comprehension because often the smallest details help tie up the narrative, so if you're skimming instead of really taking in the story, you'll often miss out on the key details that lead to that satisfied feeling at the end of the story. As Nethercott writes in the story of the vampire and the goat-girl, "As half-storied creatures themselves, they knew no weapon this powerful could be introduced to a tale without eventually being weilded" - every detail counts and Nethercott knows not to introduce a gun in act 1 without firing it in act 3. Although she often finds some unique way to fire it! Truly the mark of a masterful short story writer.

This collection absolutely scratched my itch for slightly weird, folklore-inspired but still fresh and new stories that felt like they could have come from some long story telling tradition even if they're Nethercott's creation. I can't wait to own a physical copy of this collection as well as gift it to some of my friends!

Thank you to Vintage Anchor and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

GennaRose Nethercott's Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart has a surrealist quality about the writing that is engaging, particularly in the earlier stories, but can start to feel a little one note toward the end.

Engaging theme of love, loss, and identity, Nethercott's lyricism becomes almost hypnotic, even when, as the title promises, your heart breaks.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Short story collections can be tricky to pull off. Do they all have the same theme? Are they all wildly different? Do they all share an idea, but take it in opposite directions? With Fifity Beasts to Break Your Heart, some of the stories were perfect glimpses into the creepy, the absurd, and the ache of the ugly parts of living. Others seemed to fall a little short of the mark.

Sundown at the Eternal Staircase reminded me of "Welcome to Nightvale" in its portrayal of weird events as a fact of life. A Diviner's Abecedarian gave us hints of every high school horror movie. Thread Boy felt the most real, in how we give pieces of ourselves to others or leave them behind in places we have gone, and if we're not careful, we can become so entangled in these webs that we lose ourselves. The War of Fog is every creeping gothic folk tale, where we know something is coming, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is going to be. Drowning Lessons is a glimpse at how things we take for granted aren't necessarily available for everyone to enjoy. These were the stories that resonated with me out of all of this collection. Some of the other stories may resonate with someone else.

If you are a fan of the surreal, open-ended stories, creeping unease, and harsh reflections on life, there is something here for you. Fifity Beasts to Break Your Heart has enough hidden in its pages to make this book worth picking up.

Short stories are usually hit or miss for me, and these were sort of an exception in a way that some were a definite hit, and some others - quite a miss.

I particularly enjoyed "Sundown at the Eternal Staircase", "A Diviner’s Abecedarian" and "A Haunted Calendar". They sort of reminded me of the spooky magic I used to find in "Welcome to Nightwale", skirting the line between mundane and and absurd, written in an atmospheric manner, that tastes of both ordinary and insanity at the same time. Similarly, I loved the passages about the beasts and their illustrations.

Sadly, some of the other stories fell flat. I feel like they lacked the whimsical nature of the other ones, thus taking away from the cohesiveness of the whole book.

Weird and wonderful. GennaRose Nethercott’s writing is full of imagination and dark whimsy. Each fairy-tale-like story is rooted in universal truths. Every story is expertly crafted. If you read Thistlefoot and fell in love with Nethercott’s writing, you will not be disappointed. If you haven’t read any of Nethercott’s previous works, these stories will delight and her words will haunt you.

The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories by GennaRose Nethercott are quirky and strange, heartbreaking and heartwarming all at once, thought-provoking, eerie and terrifying; not the kind of terror that results in jump scares and blood-curdling screams, more like the dawning realization you have when you wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, the tendrils of a nightmare licking at your brain that you can't quite remember, but you know you don't want to forget.

If you are looking for a collection of stories with simple characters whose motivations are clear and a linear journey with set direction and a taut red thread leading you from point A, to point B, to destination: happy ending, this is not the book for you. If however, you are willing to get lost in the intricate labyrinth of bizarre worlds and shifting mirrors that these stories contain, then an unsettling, but compelling and worthy journey awaits you indeed.

Providing no easy answers, Nethercott invites the reader to be an active participant in examining the nature of human desire, loss, grief, addiction and obsession, the will to fit in, (and the lines we are willing to cross to get there), even as we feel stifled by others demands and yearn to break free. There's also reflections on history, time, and memory.

To read this book is to discover that you are both the wide-eyed reader, bravely but naively stepping off the cliff into a wild and phantasmagorical world of unpredictabilities, embracing all the hope, beauty and possibility of being human, but also the greedy, ravenous monster whose reflection you see in the mirror.

My favorite read of the year and just in time before we head into the next one: beautiful in its prose and introspection, the reading felt active, visceral. Many of the stories did indeed break my heart. Others left me with a gnawing dread that I still feel, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. The best stories are the ones you carry with you, and these will stay with me for a long time to come.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage for providing an advance copy of this book for me to review.

This book definitely pushes the boundaries of its form and is able to convey themes of longing and heartbreak through a variety of different stories. As is often the case, some stories resonated more with me than others, and some were harder to get through. These aren’t stories that will give you answers or resolution, but they will take you on a journey.

Thank you NetGalley and Vintage Anchor!
I am a huge fan of GennaRose Nethercott and I am so thrilled that I get to read her new book early. This offer is one of my favorite books that I have read this year, and I am so excited to see such a unique book coming from this author. This book is definitely a unique and weird horror anthology. A lot of the stories focus on crazy creatures or ideas that feel almost out of this world. I've seen a lot of people say that the stories are really abstract and I think that's one of the things that really stands out about this book. Many of the stories feel like there is a deeper meaning or deeper story that we are so close as a reader to uncovering. The stories read so well that I am really impressed with the author's writing. The writing style is very powerful and almost lyrical in some sections which amplifies the eeriness of the stories.

It's always difficult to review short story collections because it seems like I always end up hovering somewhere around the middle, in terms of rating. For the most part, I'd say this collection was just fine. There were a few stories I liked, a few I didn't really vibe with, but mostly I just felt ambivalent. The stories I tended to like were the ones with a bit of darker humor laced throughout (ex: Sundown at the Eternal Staircase, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart, A Haunted Calendar). The ones I didn't quite like as much were the ones that seemed a bit heavy-handed with what they were trying to convey and stretched on for longer than I would've liked (Homebody, The Thread Boy). What I appreciated about the stories is that they varied in terms of tone shifting from haunting and eerie to slightly wistful and sad sometimes with an undertone of humor. They were definitely on the weird end, occasionally dipping into surrealist territory.

If you like weird, creepy, slightly humorous stories, maybe give this collection a try. It wasn't entirely to my tastes, but there were a few good things I got out of it.

Thank you NetGalley for a free e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart" by GennaRose Nethercott is a mesmerizing collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore that delves deep into the complexities of human emotions and desires. Nethercott's writing is lush and evocative, painting vivid pictures of worlds where the lines between reality and fantasy blur, and where the monstrous and the beautiful coexist in haunting harmony.

Each story in this collection explores different facets of longing, love, and the inherent darkness within the human psyche. Nethercott masterfully crafts narratives that are as thought-provoking as they are unsettling, making the reader question the nature of monstrosity and desire. The variety of tales, from the story of teenage girls uncovering the mysteries of a sinister roadside attraction to a zombie rooster solving a missing persons case, demonstrates Nethercott's versatility and creativity as a storyteller.

One of the standout aspects of this collection is the way Nethercott uses fantastical elements to explore real human emotions. The stories are steeped in metaphor, with each beast and mythical creature serving as a representation of deeper, often darker, aspects of the human experience. This approach not only captivates the reader's imagination but also offers profound insights into love, loss, and longing.

The prose is beautifully crafted, with a poetic quality that adds to the ethereal nature of the stories. Nethercott's ability to create atmospheres that are both eerie and enchanting is remarkable. Each tale is a journey into a world that is at once familiar and utterly alien, where the rules of reality are bent and reshaped.

"Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart" is a collection that will appeal to fans of dark fantasy and literary fiction alike. It's a book that challenges and enthralls, inviting readers to look beyond the surface and explore the depths of their own hearts. Nethercott has created a work that is not just a collection of stories but a tapestry of human emotion, woven with threads of the fantastical. This book is a testament to the power of storytelling and the endless possibilities of the imagination.

I absolutely loved every story in this book. I didn't have a favorite because I enjoyed all of them. Good cast of authors as well.

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott is a collection of short stories by the author of Thistlefoot. Most of the stories have either a scifi, horror, or fairy tale vibe but they are all very unique and completely engrossing.

I absolutely adored everything about this collection. This book is for people who like things that are kind of strange and a little weird. This is one of the only short story collections where I think every story is really strong. It would be impossible for me to pick a favorite because I loved them all for different reasons. This is a book that I can see myself revisiting often.

That being said, this book is not going to work for some people and I can already see what the complaints will be so, as a warning, here are a few reasons you may not like this book. A lot of these stories just throw you in without a lot of explanation and by the end, you still don’t have a lot of answers. If you aren’t the kind of reader who can just enjoy the ride of a strange story, maybe avoid this one.

But if you are the kind of reader who would sit and listen to a bog witch tell a fairy tale or if you would run barefoot through a swamp looking for an adventure or if you like things a little sapphic and a lot atmospheric, this is the book for you. This book has cemented this author as an autobuy author and I cannot wait to see what she writes next.