2.75 ✰
"a person can be a real monster too."

hellions is a collection of short stories. while a few were fascinating and captivating, i found that most of them were a bit of a struggle to get through. personally, i just don’t think the short story/essay format is for me. all of them were unsettling in their own way, often a bit feral and based in locations i’m familiar with which is something i enjoyed. out of all of them, i liked ‘gricklemare’ the best.

thank you to julia elliott, tin house books and netgalley for the arc 🖤

These stories felt part gothic, part fairytale, rooted in reality yet otherworldly. Stunning prose and not to be shallow - but look at that cover!

What a unique collection of dark and wonderous stories. I am not sure how to qualify the genre, but dark fantasy with horror elements seems to foot the bill. If you are looking for a darkly mysterious, almost fever dream-like book of short stories with a Southern bent, look no further.

Overall, I really enjoyed Julia Elliott's writing style as well as her imagination, and the "hellion" theme was a very cool connection throughout the collection. “Hellions” indeed, there is a thread of fierce childhood abandon throughout all the stories that invokes nostalgia for a radiant summer evening of childhood in the dog days of summer. I could almost taste the red Sno cones and Dr Pepper Chapstick.

My favorite stories of the book include:

** The Maiden: an impoverished, outcast child finds unexpected power. This one had all the vibes of Stephen King's Carrie crossed with the unsettling atmosphere of Gummo.

** Arcadia Lakes: a lonely child befriends a monster. My description is a vast oversimplification, but trust me when I say that this was a very cool story… and strangely beautiful, or beautifully strange, depending on how you look at it.

** The Mothers: mysterious woodland children goad a group of kids into unleashing unique horrors upon unsuspecting adults. This story, more than any other, also had some particularly impressive dark humor from a writer's perspective.

** All the Other Demons: the famous horror film The Exorcist is enmeshed in the ether of an adolescent girl’s life. Her examination of the film’s central thesis, seen through the eyes of a young girl, made me reexamine everything I have ever thought about the seminal horror book and movie.

That said, in some cases there was some ambiguity in storytelling that left me confused. Perhaps because of the wondrous and imaginative nature of the tales, at times the writing became so fantastical that I felt like I lost the thread of the story. One example is Moon Witch, Moon Witch, which lost me and never found me again. Maybe I need to reread to see if I catch something I missed on the first read. And with Another Frequency and Gricklemare, while I largely enjoyed the stories and storytelling, I am not sure I fully grok what ultimately happened in either conclusion.

I feel like this collection will appeal to readers of Brom, for dark fantasy aspects, and Adam Leslie and Samanta Schweblin for those who enjoy those fever dream elements in storytelling.

It is difficult to rate the whole collection of stories as one, but with all stories considered I would round this out to 4 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley, Julia Elliott, and Tin House Books for sending me an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to Netgalley for this arc of Hellions by Julia Elliot. This was a really well written book and super short. This is a blend of southern gothic, horror, fairytales, and some folklore. If you enjoy stories based off of those things, I would recommend reading this. It's such a fun read, it can be read in one sitting.

Bizarre, intriguing, and vivid tales of folklore mixed southern gothic horror. I enjoyed this book and had fun reading it. I think one of my favorite tales was Hellion - I loved the Swamp Ape lore and I loved the trouble Butter & Alex got into together. My favorite quote from Butter: “Can’t survive without a ride and a weapon, not with these hellion boys.” Each story focuses on the weird, feral, and strange aspects of girlhood - and I freaking love it. Some stories fell short for me but the majority of them were addicting and fun to read.

𝐃𝐢𝐝 𝐈 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠? 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐬- 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞, 𝐚 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲.

The stories promise folklore, fairy tales, horror and Southern Gothic, the author delivers. It is interesting how book land in my hands with a common theme. Lately it has been earthy reads, beautiful and disturbing. But as someone who often has dirt under her fingernails from digging in the garden and bits of wild weeds in my hair, I ripped through this collection that reminded me of the soundless creatures that wait in the woods and how wild our imagination runs in youth. I love Hellion, a tale about thirteen-year-old Butter who runs around earning a dollar with her daisy shootin’ lizards for her great-aunt Edna. She teaches her cousin Aiken (a soft boy from the city) a thing or two about her life sneaking up on the Swamp Ape and outsmarting the mean bullies. She has a whole universe to show him outdoors, away from his video game, and it took me back to my early days as a kid growing up under the Florida sun.

Erl King made me laugh, the boozy, middle aged “Wild Professor”- a sort of king in the humanities building luring young college girls hungry for poetry and passion to his woodland cabin for summer seduction. Despite her resistance, a sort of madness overtakes our narrator, and she falls into the trap of his shifting form. How long before this lull from reality crumbles and she shakes off the romantic spell of willful ignorance?

The Maiden is the story of a girl named Cujo, “a stunted, breastless bitter thing”, whose very existence invokes disgust in the other kids, until she mounts the trampoline and leaves them in awe with her high-flying stunts, when she isn’t spitting curses at them. I would love a novel based on Cujo and Butter, these characters would make a wonderful coming of age tale.

Each story is an enchantment, reminding the reader how we create our own monsters, terrors, as much as we lend a glamor to a chosen few. It’s all perception. With a little cleverness we can outrun disaster, change our fate. There are lands ‘kissed with curses’, suspicious wives, burned out mothers whose children are turning strange, feral at an art colony, Gricklemare harassing a lonely woman in the woods with their trickery, and a family lost in nightmares after watching The Exorcist.

Loved the stories, a fun escape.

Publication Date: April 15, 2025

Tin House Books

Hellions builds a liminal space, layer by layer: verdant, feral, and populous, with half-wild children, and the author’s world of folkloric creatures, tangley, clawed, and perhaps divine. Julia Elliot’s writing is captivating. Each story presents a world, humid and hung with kudzu vines, deep-forested and double-sided, each turn the stories take could lead you back to the most normal and average of scenarios, or an ecstatic, meandering, path to a magical world, dark and unpredictable.

Reading Hellions felt like an escape into a swamp, or a fairy tale, or like walking in the woods as a child world-building something lurking and magical in dense landscape. I would expect nothing less from Tin House. Utterly escapist. A perfect Spring / Summer vibe for the Winter blues. A beach reach for melancholy girls.

I have trouble with collections of short stories holding my attention, but this kept me engaged all the way through. I feel Hellions would be an excellent read for the Baba Yaga women, the lovers of the hidden wonders of the woods, for those with pareidolia, for the folkloric and feral, for those who run with their inner child, and anyone who loves a great read.

Elliot has an understanding of the magical natural world as perceived by the primal self, and the inner child, that was transporting and lovely. I feel she is a writer to watch, and I will be looking for more from her backlog, and from her in the future.

This was a well written short story collection. I like this genre a lot, but there are stronger collections out there. It was a decent read, I enjoyed half of the stories, and the other half were underwhelming. The cover art is gorgeous though, and I would read from this author again. If you like speculative fiction then you will devour this baby.

Vivid stories and detailed characterization. Would definitely read another book from this author. Loved the cover of my edition, very striking!

“Black Mirror” in book form that I have been looking for!!! This book was dark in a fun way, which made it shocking to read and easily enjoyable, especially since we got to know so many characters. This is what short stories are all about!!

The stories in this collection are weird and whimsical with a Southern gothic twist. Many of them center around transformation of some kind, particularly the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Although I liked a lot of the concepts and themes presented here, the only story that I really loved was the titular 'Hellion.' Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

I loved this book. Julia Elliott sees the world. Elliott’s writing style is lush and lyrical, filled with sensory detail that makes the setting feel both grotesque and dreamlike. Hellions is a collection that crackles with wild energy, balancing Southern Gothic weirdness with biting humor and deep empathy. Each story pulses with strange, unsettling beauty—whether she’s exploring futuristic nursing homes, feral girlhood, or surreal domestic horror, Elliott renders her characters with aching humanity. Her work evokes Angela Carter and Kelly Link, but with a distinctly Southern twist, where decay and desire blur in unexpected ways. Fans of speculative fiction that leans into the grotesque, the uncanny, and the fiercely intelligent will find plenty to love here.

Julia Elliott blends folklore, Southern gothic and horror in her stellar collection of short stories, Hellions. The stories involve a human (kids, nuns, professors, grad students, etc.) possessed with special powers or interacting with a creature of mythical being, often in the woods or a swamp. Elliot’s prose is vivid in its description of setting and the characters experiences. There was also some stories that brought tech and fairytales together. Like any story collection, I enjoyed some stories more than others, but overall I really enjoyed the collection.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tim House for the free eARC.

“Hellions” is a collection of stories that all seem to have a supernatural or mystic theme behind them. A lot of the stories deal with childhood (more specifically, girlhood and becoming a woman). I don’t think there was anything here that I really disliked. Elliott is a wonderful writer, who seems to able embrace and excel at different writing styles. Highly recommend this!

ARC Review

Thank you to Tin House Books for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Hellions by Julia Elliott is a collection of short stories that, while not strict in their theming, contain elements of the supernatural and sublime. The stories, often set in the American south, are highly atmospheric and often times create imagery that is both incredibly vivid and incredibly grotesque at the same time.

The stories are very high brow, in both their intelligent references and theming. For readers with a love for brief, challenging, but ultimately worthwhile short stories, the collection is a wonderful choice. I would caution that readers who don’t enjoy works that don’t have concrete plot arcs or finite explanations. Part of the allure of this book is the somewhat mysterious ambiguity that defines many of the stories. It is often impossible to discern whether a character is in reality or dreaming, and whether creatures are real or imagined.

As with all collections of short stories or essays, not all of them are going to land as successfully as the others. However, Elliott’s works display a high level of consistency across selections. Personally, I found that the most compelling story was ‘Gricklemare,’ but I did particularly enjoy ‘Another Frequency’ as well.

One of my favorite things that Elliott does throughout Hellions is describe the wild, at times feral, highly magical time of girlhood. Whether her young, female characters are raising alligators, riding shoeless on mini bikes, imagining fantastical worlds on other planets, or obsessing over demons, they defy the conventions of traditional imagery. These young girls and teens have deep connections to the natural and the supernatural and are hellions as much as any of the boys depicted in the book.

I found this to be a somewhat challenging read at times. It was nevertheless enjoyable and unusual. 4/5 stars!

This book was just okay for me.. It was a bit weird and confusing a lot of the times, so it was just hard to get through. I think that the book may need some editing to clear up the messy confusing parts. But overall, I did not enjoy this book or themes

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

Julia Elliott does a fantastic job in writing this book, it had a great collection of stories and enjoyed the differences of this book. I was hooked from the first page and story, it was everything that I wanted and enjoyed the overall feel of this. It left me wanting to read more and look forward to more from Julia Elliott.

This was an endlessly compelling, atmospheric dive into myscical, uncanny, yet often funny horror. Each story had something unique to give, but all were different flavors of interesting. This is a standout collection of short stories that have me immediately interested in the author.

Hellions is a perfect word for this collection, which generally follows different women and girls who are different kinds of disruptive or bewitching. From the witch who captures the attention of a man struggling to survive in his medieval village, the young girl that seems to cast spells on her trampoline, to the mothers at an artist's retreat who can't seem to stop their children from becoming feral after making new, mysterious friends from the woods, all of these stories were a delight to follow and deeply mysterious in their own way.

A particular theme I really enjoyed was the unification of mysticism and suburban ennui. My favorite story, The Maiden, follows a group of children who become afraid of a neighborhood girl who seems to curse those who slight her. All the Other Demons follows a young girl and her family as they get ready to watch The Exorcist for the first time on TV, and her intrigue for inviting a demon into herself. Erl King is a deeply funny satirization of the kind of "compelling but creepy" humanities professor, reimagining him as a druidic force with primordial knowledge he ritually passes down to young college students he frequently ends up grooming.

This was a really cool and refreshing take on horror, and I loved many of these stories a lot. I do think the front half of the book was stronger than the latter half but I wouldn't say any of these stories were not enjoyable. It has piqued my interest in the author, and I can't wait to pick up more of her works.

Great read. I love the way Elliott weaves stories together to convey how the surreal is present in our every day lives.