This book was a really mixed bag. It started out really strong with stories by Simon Bestwick, Annie Neugebauer, Josh Malerman, Dale Bailey. After that, though, it went really downhill for quite a while. Here are my individual ratings:

Bait - 4/5
The Pelt - 5/5
A Sunny Disposition- 5/5
The Donner Party - 4/5
White Noise in a White Room - 2/5
Singing My Sister Down - 1.5/5
Back Seat - 5/5
England and Nowhere - 3.5/5
Endless Summer - 4/5
My Mother’s Ghosts - 3/5
The Wink and the Gun - 3/5
One of These Nights - 3/5
LD50 - 2/5
Cavity - 3/5
Souvenirs - 3.5/5
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - 3/5
The Wrong Shark - 3.5/5
21 Brooklands - 3.5/5
Unkindly Girls - 3.5/5
A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts- 3.5/5
Teeth - 4/5

My final rating is 3.5, rounded down. Still, there were a few stories that I absolutely loved, which made it more than worthwhile.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

(I know that ARCs often have typos, but I found it necessary to let you know that A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts is absolutely riddled with typos and was almost unreadable at times as a result.)

Not a bad mix of stories overall. Some shine brighter than others. My favorites are "The Donner Party" by Dale Bailey, "Teeth" by Stephen Graham Jones, "Where Are You going, Where Did You Come From?" by the master Joyce Carol Oates, and "Souvenirs" by Sharon Gosling.

One never has to worry about an anthology edited by the award-winning Ellen Datlow being a dud, but some are better than others. This one is definitely at the “better” end of that continuum to be sure. It’s one of my favorites in recent memory. There are no ghosts or cosmic monstrosities within these pages. The monsters are strictly of the human variety. If your taste in horror runs in that vein you will not be disappointed. A truly stellar compendium of nastiness. Highly recommended,

Twenty-one tales of how psychological horror….”hell is other people.”

Nice mix of stories. My favorites were “The Donner Party” by Dale Bailey, “Endless Summer” by Stewart O’Nan, “The Wrong Shark” by Ray Cluey and a story I had read before but was just as great on the re-read, “Where Are You Going, Where Did You Come From?” by Joyce Carol Oates.