As someone who normally wouldn’t pick up a short story collection, I really enjoyed this book. I think the length of each story was fitting and it didn’t feel like something was missing from each tale, which was my main issue with previous collections I've read.

As the title suggests, most of the stories deal with death as a main theme in very different and interesting ways. Not all stories were great, but I did like most of them (especially the last one). This book was quite a surprise for me and I was pleased by the experience.

Many thanks to Red Hen Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This review and many others can be viewed on my Goodreads page at the following link: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/80102102-ana

What a beautifully written book. Such sad subjects but the way they are written is magical. The words flowed from the page and so did my tears! I devoured this in one sitting. Beautiful, thank you.

a hauntingly beautiful short story collection, The Sea Gives Up The Dead explores themes of family dynamics, love, grief and longing in historical as well as contemporary settings, with a fairytale twist in some. my personal favorite was "the princess wants for company", though i would definitely read a lot of these beautiful stories were they full length novels. will absolutely recommend this!

I really enjoyed the writing style on this short story collection!
The stories were all really different but fit well together because of the similar style and themes.
All of the stories were sort of fantasy-fairytale-esque.

Nice selection of sea stories. I love books and stories involving the sea, islands, lighthouses, etc. This book I enjoyed thoroughly.

Short stories are such a unique craft that I’ve only really begun to develop a taste for, despite reading many collections of them. Some things that resonate with me as a reader: quick, nuanced development of characters and setting, a plot that feels both complete within and not restrained by the short word count, a memorable “hook” or elevator pitch, and imagery that lingers long after the story is finished.

In all those aspects, this collection handily succeeds.

The writer has clearly worked to hone her craft and each story is polished in a way that reflects that. I will say, they are considerably darker than I expected based on the blurb and description and they deal with some extremely challenging topics — but that difficult subject matter is handled artfully and couched within various forms of magical realism and straight up magic. I do hope the final copy includes content warnings, however.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a dark and somewhat magical look at death, grief, and the worlds they contain.

Thank you to the author and publisher for access to this digital ARC in exchange for my review.

this was a collection of very beautiful stories with musings on grief and death. i was absolutely entranced by some and others i found not as engaging. the queer elements were my favourite in each story, especially the story ‘some monuments’ which was my favourite. overall i enjoyed this and would definitely recommend it for short story lovers out there!

I enjoyed this diverse collection of the short stories that read as a mixture of folktale and contemporary fiction. I appreciate the rich culture that most of the characters embody and the vastly different stories that are told throughout the entire collection. Each story is linked to the overall theme of death, so a lot of them have a sorrowful undertone, but there are some surprisingly uplifting stories mixed in the collection.

My personal favorites are Seven Deaths, My Husband and I, Small Monuments, Esther and her VoiceI and the titular The Sea Gives Up the Dead. I like that Olguin shows how both love and death intertwine to form who we are as people and how we interact with one another–her stories were not afraid to show some of the ugliness behind our humanity which makes the characters within all the more relatable. This was a great read for anyone who is looking for a diverse collection of short stories about the intricacies of human interaction, love, and death.

This was a very cohesive and consistent set of short stories. All of the stories, while perhaps not taking place in the same universe, share a thematic through line of death, grief, loss, and love. I found the exploration of non-death mourning particularly intriguing, first touched upon in the initial story "Seven Deaths." The characters, though our time with them was brief, I felt were fleshed out enough to understand and empathize with their plight. The stories that stood out to me were "My Husband and Me" (very reminiscent of that one Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back"), "The Sea Gives Up the Dead" and the final story "Foam of the Waves"; a great conclusion to the collection. Overall, Olguin's writing conveys a distinct sense of longing and melancholy that leaks of the page and settles in the readers heart.

The Sea Gives Up the Dead is a short story collection where all of the stories in some way deal with grief and death. Maybe half of the stories are paranormal or sci-fi as well. The writing of each story is absolutely beautiful and incredibly engaging. The stories were each the perfect length and did not linger for too long while also giving enough information and plot to really sink your teeth into. The three stories at the end were possibly my favorite, but I did not dislike any of the stories. I highly recommend this collection!

Absolutely love this collection of short stories. They feel like fairy tales for adults. There’s an innocent whimsy about them that assures you everything is going to be okay but by the time you get to the moral of the story you are struck with fear and a warning of sorts.

The captain America story was a particular favourite in which we feel the lies people tell us distort our desires. But once we get what we want we yearn for the lies.

Each of these stories will stay with you for different reasons .highly recommend

This is a short story collection which delves into magic realism, fantasy, historical fiction, and realism. I noticed a couple of overarching topics throughout the stories, but the two that recurred the most were family dynamics and war. However, the stories also explore queerness, regret, and grief. Olguín presents complex family dynamics in which patriarchs are gone to war, work, dead, or are simply authoritative and overbearing. Most stories followed girls, young women, or mothers roughing out illness, money, and love. There was a lot of range in terms of plot and conflict like a story with a dangerous dragon on the loose, to an AI which eased a grieving sister, and the last story is a Little Mermaid retelling (Anderson’s not Disney’s).

I enjoyed most of the stories as a new-to-me author I can say that Olguín is a great storyteller. I found myself easily engaged with each plot, and the pacing is done well. I would pick up more from this author.

I selected this short story collection from new-to-me author author Molly Olguín simply based upon title and cover art. I was not disappointed; in fact, the stories became stronger and stronger as the collection progressed, until the final stories were simply home runs for me.

As the title should imply, there is a lot of death here, and loss and grief, so readers shouldn't come into this expecting a nice sea shanty and some crabby patties. Instead, there is a mix of genres - fantasy, historical, contemporary, magical realism - that incorporate the themes of water and death and loss. In no particular order, the ones that will stick with me for a long time are "Captain America's Missing Fingers," "The Sea Gives Up the Dead," and the final story, a reverse little mermaid story titled "Foam on the Waves." I also really enjoyed "Small Monuments," with its powerful opening line that made me sit up and reread it twice before I was sure I understood what was to come.

"The love of Maria’s life died and sent herself to an oven in Chicago where she was baked into a diamond.”

I also really, really enjoyed the story of the WWI Gold Star mother, who travels to France to locate the remains of her son Eddie, only to find something completely different and wonderful instead. It was beautifully done, I thought.

So, two thumbs up, and kudos to the author!

This collection was absolutely splendid and bizarre! It really knocked me out of a serious reading slump.

I am not usually a huge fan of the short story collection format, but this just works. The pacing of the stories is good, and the character exposition/development is honestly better than some full length books I've read recently.

The Princess Wants for Company and the book's namesake The Sea Gives Up the Dead stood out. Reminders of the interconnected nature of life and death, love and loathing, and the transformative nature of grief give the stories a universal feel. I very much enjoyed this read and have a feeling I'll be coming back to reread in the future.

Thanks to the publishers, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

I requested this book because it seemed like something I would pick up at the library and I'm so so glad I did! I loved this collection of short stories. This was genuinely amazing. Very deep, introspective book that made you think. And none of the stories seemed dragged out/too long, which I feel like it hard to achieve in a collection.

I would reccommend this book to a friend.

A quick reading selection of stories that combine fairy tales with heavy themes like death. Beautifully written and very dark, I'm still thinking about several of these short stories weeks later.

One of the ones that stuck with me the most is the story of the AI programmer who inadvertently gives her state of the art work project the voice and mannerisms of her dead girlfriend. As someone who really has qualms about the rise of artificial intelligence, this story was haunting as the scientist grapples with letting a spectre of her lost love go back out into the world.

The grieving five-star mother will also stick with me for a long time.

Olgin is a lyric storyteller for the ages.

I really enjoyed reading these short stories, each one distinctive and captivating in its own way. They were haunting, often tinged with sadness, and left a lasting impression. The depth of emotion in each story was striking, and the atmosphere they created lingered after I’d finished. My favorite was The Sea Gives Up the Dead.

I haven't read a book of short stories since high school. That was a looooong time ago. I believe the author, Molly Olguin, sparked something in me. She has composed quite the collection of unique short stories that were not quite what I expected. I received this as an advanced reader copy from (many thanks to) NetGalley, Molly Olguin and Red Hen Press. I have voluntarily provided this honest review.

The first story really grabbed my attention and kept me wanting more. It was a twist I was not expecting.. Then there was "the devil" and Lucia., an unlikely "friendship" that we can all relate to in some degree. While all of the stories hold the same underlying tone, they are all quite different and entertaining and I can understand why the author received the accolades she did. There was great character building in such a short amount of time and her descriptive writing made envisioning the environments that much easier. I look forward to the author's future projects!

An excellent collection of short stories with predominantly queer and/or Mexican-American protagonists in historical, modern-day and futuristic settings. The most common theme of all stories in here is love, death and grief.
I think the overall best feature of the book is the uniqueness of the narrative voice in each story, every single one is very distinct and one of a kind, which allows it to avoid a common pitfall of short-story collections: repetitiveness.
My least favourite thing doesn't actually has anything to do with the stories themselves, it's more of an organizational issue: I'm not quite satisfied with the order in which they appear in the book. As of right now the weakest stories are in the beginning and the best ones are towards the end, which might cause impatient readers to DNF the book.
I gave the collection as a whole a 4-star rating which is an average of the ratings I gave to the individual stories as follows:
Seven Deaths: 3 stars - definitely horrific, has a slight fairytale-esque vibe to it but wasn't quite detailed and/or long enough to make it really immersive.
Devils Also Believe: 2 stars - my least favourite in the entire book, I found it very confusing at multiple points, the setting was quite hard to visualize due to a lack of descriptive passages but the story itself is beautifully tragic with a lot of potential.
The Princess Wants For Company: 5 stars - sapphic magical realism with dragons behaving like naughty bears wandering in urban spaces, so in one word: yes!
The Undertaker's Dogs: 4 stars - just a little bit lacking in depth but a deliciously disturbing and painfully realistic story (the intrusive thoughts were way too real!)
honey from the rock: 4 stars - a little too short for me but it was an amazing Kafkaesque nightmare scenario
Clara Aguilera's Holy Lungs: 5 stars - this one explores a very very interesting scenario very very well, it's so good that it genuinely deserves to be worked into a full-length novel (also the first of three stories with more of a Black Mirror vibe than fairytale style)
My Husband and Me: 4 stars - love the epistolary style, it's a lovely change of pace in a collection, although it makes the story a bit one-sided. I also found the ending a little too abrupt and unresolved even though open endings usually don't bother me at all.
Small Monuments: 4 stars - this is the second story more reminiscent of a Black Mirror episode, not much horror in here or at least not the conventional kind but the story is very unique, really heart-rending and bittersweet.
Captain America's Missing Fingers: 4 stars - not in a million years would I have been able to divine what a title like that would unfold into but boy was it a ride! I loved having a little girl as the narrator, terrible things always seem so much more poignant through a child's eyes. The horror in here is very subtle, a lot of things go unsaid but implied and even if it is mentioned most of it is only half-understood by the kids.
Esther and The Voice: 5 stars - this is the third and final story with slight Black Mirror vibes and another one that is so very good it really deserves to be a standalone sci-fi novel.
The Sea Gives Up The Dead: 5 stars - the titular story definitely does a fair bit of heavylifting in the collection, it has everything I expected from the start: it's beautiful and horrifying and fairtale-esque and cathartic plus its protagonist is an older lady.
Foam on the Waves: 5 stars - another one that very much reflected my expectations: a dark but heartfelt mirror version of a well-known fairytale reminiscent of Angela Carter's dark retellings in The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories.
Many thanks to Red Hen Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Sea Gives Up the Dead was an incredibly well done collection of short stories, featuring different forms of loss, death, and grief. It was an interesting blend of stories that had the style and cadence of a fairytale, with a more historical setting, with others leaning more modern sci-fi. Content warnings for: death of a child, loss of a parent, death of a partner, animal death

Rating and reviewing short story collections can be difficult, but I took my time reading through the stories not to get them too jumbled, and rated them individually:

Seven Deaths - 4⭐
Devils Also Believe - 4.5⭐
The Princess Wants for Company - 5⭐
The Undertaker's Dogs - 2.5⭐
Honey From the Rock - 3⭐
Clara Aguilera's Holy Lungs - 3.5⭐
My Husband and Me - 2.5⭐
Small Monuments - 4.5⭐
Captain America's Missing Fingers - 5⭐
Esther and the Voice - 4⭐
The Sea Gives Up the Dead - 4⭐
Foam on the Waves - 5⭐

Every story was well written, my differing ratings based solely on personal enjoyment. The themes were poignant without being too dark or heavy, and the incorporation of queer identities in many of the stories felt natural and well balanced. I would gladly read more from Molly Olguín in the future.

I don’t usually read short story collections, but this book was a pleasant surprise. The length of each story felt just right, and none of them seemed incomplete, which has been an issue for me with other anthologies.

As the title suggests, death is a central theme in most of the stories, but each one approaches it in a unique and intriguing way. Not every story was my favorite, but I enjoyed the majority of them, especially the last one. Overall, it was an unexpectedly enjoyable read, and I was very satisfied with the experience.