 Okay so right up front before we jump into the review here's your content warnings or triggered warnings what what what have you I have absolutely no problem offending people or seeing people offended but I do have I do take issue with triggering people so your content warnings are rape cutting death of a child suicide and I'm sure there's a lot more just know that you're going into this one there's going to be a lot of triggers for some of you and also there's going to be spoilers sprinkled throughout I will try to tell you where they where they are and let you know flash a spoiler warning or say a spoiler warning at some point in the video but there are two stories specifically that I could not talk about without spoilers so there you have it there's your warning on with the review hello everybody E here welcome back to another book review today we are talking about the follow-up but not quite the follow-up to Mediana and in any cases things we lost in the file fire but not the files the fire the dangers of smoking in bed now why I say kind of follow-up not quite follow-up because I was informed by a friend of mine on Goodreads that this book was actually it was published before things we lost in the fire but it was translated afterwards and it is is a is a Buenos is an author from Buenos Aires and writes almost exclusively about that area of the world I'm gonna go through and talk about my favorite stories this one wasn't a perfect experience for me like things we lost in the fire but for those of you who like to click on here and get my my rating and just move along with your lives I'm giving this one five stars also I do have one minor criticism about a story later on in the book but we'll get to all that without spoilers so let's jump right into the review now I won't be talking about every single story in this collection there's 12 stories and they are all middling to fantastic I am shocked that some of these stories came before the stories of the things we lost in the fire just because they are so good does anything in this collection compare to under the black water which is my second favorite short story of all times only beating out in the hills the cities by Clive Barker no nothing in here even comes close to that and that story and things we lost in the fire is leaps and bounds above everything else if I could give it 10 stars I would that's how much better that story is than anything else but it speaks volumes to the quality of the collection that I still rated the entire thing five stars because it's that's an amazing collection this one is a very very good collection it is not amazing I can tell that I can tell in some of the stories that they were earlier stories or they might have been earlier stories but with this one I did have some questions later on with one of the stories I had an issue with but we're going to start with our lady of the quarry this is the second story in the book it is a fantastically dark subtly creepy story about a group of kids who go out well teenagers who go out to the quarry to swim and just all around mess around and they come across the lady of the quarry which is a statue dressed in red it's just it's very very creepy it reminded me a lot of another story but there's a I don't even want to tell you what it is because if you know that story it's going to spoil this story for you but this is where a mediana and he has really shines with the subtly creepy that's not to say that she does not do gory balls to the walls brutal horror well also but this is a perfect example of her doing subtle work okay so one of the themes in this collection a very heavy theme in this collection are curses the dead coming back to life that that kind of thing hauntings you know your typical horror but in any case does a fantastic job putting her own special blend her own special twist on these stories the next story I want to talk about is the cart it's about one of those food cart vendors comes to the street bad things happen and the residents of this neighborhood end up becoming cursed is something it was something unlike anything I had read before the overall plot isn't anything new or original but I love how how much time passes in such a short period of time it's a it's a very short story I think it might be 10 pages long 12 pages something like that and most of the stories in here are that short except for the one that I had an issue with but we'll get to that I'm actually going to talk about that one next even though it is toward the end of the book but I want to balance this with my positives and my negatives so the cart I really enjoyed watching this this story play out it had a lot of my favorite tropes and instances or you know it had a lot of my favorite horror tropes in it and I really enjoyed next up we have a story that should have been great for me it should have been utterly fantastic but I'm really tired of this type of story I don't know why I just am and the story went on way way too long and that is kids who come back I should have loved this just for just for the I don't know man the I guess the the creepiness of the and I mean kids who come back you you know what we're talking about here I should have enjoyed it more than I than I did but I didn't quite see for such a long story I saw the point but I didn't see the point and what I mean by that is I have a feeling I I don't know there was there was LGBT well there was specifically there was a lesbian in the story and the themes seem to be this I'm gonna try and try and compartmentalize my thoughts on it it seemed to be an allegory for gay kids coming out to their parents and parents not supporting them because these kids there was a very I felt it as a very LGBT QIA plus theme to it that one of the characters was a lesbian one was bisexual but the story had to do with these kids and this is spoilers for this story so if you don't want spoilers I'll try and remember to leave a thing so you can skip ahead to the next thing so spoilers in three two one they're these kids who run away disappear whatever these kids die even if the family doesn't know they're dead and then all of a sudden they start appearing in these different parks around the city and then they end up going back home once they are once the authorities figure out where to put them or if the family finds them whatever because some of the families come to the parks looking for their lost kids they get them home realize that they are not the same kid that they thought they were I think that's important here and then they end up kicking them back out on the street or sending them off to hospitals or what have you I think that's what it is but it seemed like that was a good thing in the story and that's what I had issue with I don't but I don't know I'm so I'm conflicted I don't want to believe that in any case it was saying that you know the kids should be shunned I'm not sure but toward the end there is an idea that they're going to get their payback and so on and so forth so maybe it's a positive message overall the story just didn't work for me and it was so long and tedious to read this is nothing like any of the other stuff that I have read from Median and Nikkei's uh there's um there well she doesn't do a whole lot of dialogue anyways this one was really really narrative heavy and I didn't enjoy reading it so on top of the themes being a little bit convoluted and I'm not sure exactly what she was trying to say maybe she wasn't trying to say anything at all maybe it was just your basic basic ass basic ass horror story you know the old joke and the teacher asks what did the author mean by the uh by the curtains are blue and then it says the author I meant the curtains are fucking blue you know there might not be any underlying tone there it might just be a story of you know zombie kids but they're not zombies they're more of a ghost kind of thing because they walk through walls at one point um it's also that was a little weird it's like they could walk through walls but sometimes they were tangible sometimes they weren't I don't know the world building it didn't work for me um so this is the that's the only complaint I have about this story that that one story was too long too convoluted the author's message got lost or even if there was a message I couldn't even tell um so that's my one complaint and now we're going to move on with the rest of the amazing content in this collection next up we have a story kind of came out of nowhere for me this story is where are you dear heart uh this story was absolutely freaky um I don't want to spoil too much for you but this is one of the most unique stories I've heard I've read because it has to do with a woman with a heartbeat kink yes you heard that right her kink what gets her off is abnormal heartbeats um so she ends up finding someone and just like you know the the the true story about the cannibal who found the man who actually wanted to be eaten um she finds somebody that will allow her to you know listen to the heart and all of a sudden I love the way it ended uh the last couple paragraphs of this story is absolutely fantastic it might be my favorite story in the collection which is very weird because it is heavily heavily horror erotica um there was some there was some points in there where I I got a little aroused and I'm gonna be completely honest with you I usually don't with stories I'm a very visual person when it comes to things like that um I like looking more than I like reading um so I don't care too much for erotica the only erotica author I've ever read um that did anything for me before this story is Sonora Taylor um with a erotica piece that I read from her about Krampus hey look don't shame anyways but this was this was one of those stories man that came out of nowhere for me because I started reading and I was like this is a little too erotic for me and I was like I'm glad it's as erotic as it is but if anybody else reads this one and thinks I'm weird for getting turned on in certain parts none of it had to do with like blood or guts or anything it's certain things that the woman does um that was like wow that's that's hot but um if anybody else read this and is like god he's just just too weird for me I would love to hear from you I don't care if you can't shame me but it's I would I would love to hear from you because this one I felt was really really sexy and if I'm alone in this I'd love to know if that's just me you know anyways onto the next story okay so the next story is called Meet MEAT not to be confused with Patrick DeLacy's I think it's DeLake Patrick it might be might have said that wrong but the the author of Meet who anyways it has nothing to do with that um this story is about a I love stories about cults I love stories about music this is about a pop star who releases an album called Meet and then right afterwards kills himself um there is there is a scene of necro cannibalism in this story that really got underneath my skin um yeah if you if you can't put two and two together necro cannibalism is human beings eating dead human beings uh there's a bit in there that really really disgusted me um I hope that's not too much of a spoiler uh it probably is so apologize I'm gonna put a spoiler alert at the beginning of this thing uh just to let everybody know uh and I'll put a content warning too so I'll go back and do that this is to remind myself so E go back and and do those things but uh this story by the time we got to the end of it I was like this is this is a fantastic fantastic idea and I would my only criticism here is I would have loved to have read an entire novel about this pop star who who commits suicide and creates this cult following afterward I really really think that that would be something that I would like to read fleshed out even more I find that to be an issue with all short well all short stories that I really really love and I think you guys have the same problem too I hear this a lot it's too short that's a compliment you know more people want to stay in your world longer it's a hundred percent a compliment at least at least for me it is when people say hey your books too short I take it as a compliment um unless they're like it's you know you didn't wrap up in if that's a problem then then we have issues but um if they just wanted more of the same content that's awesome that's a win um for me and I feel it's a win when I say it I wish this story was longer okay now we're going to talk about no birthdays or baptisms uh there is a very disturbing line in here that uh made me stop reading um Mariana Enriquez describes girls from the ages of six to nine in very sexual very sexual language um I spoke to my friend Nat about this uh TC Parker that's she Natalie Edwards or TC Parker she writes under both names um I was talking to her about it and I asked you know should we give should we give should we give Enriquez a pass because it's a woman writing about little girls I don't know I really don't it did disturb me so if that was the point it she got it I mean it's it's language like water you know trickling down an ass crack but it's literally like trickling down her ass instead of like butt or butt but cheeks or buttocks something a little more neutral than than ass and also the reason why it's being explained is because the the video that is being taken is going to uh maybe a maybe pedophile I mean I'm just got a pedophile because it's somebody who wants images of a child of a little girl under the age of 10 you know not naked but with more flesh shown that's that's literally from the book um that really really bothered me uh it got under my skin like I said uh so before warned when you go into the story man you're going to read some stuff that you probably don't want to read I hope it's on purpose I'm thinking it's on purpose so I'm not going to give Enriquez a pass I'm going to tell you I enjoyed the story in so much as the story disturbed the hell out of me so I'm going to take it with a grain assault uh that that language and I'm going to say that it was there to disturb and it did its job now we're going to talk about the titular story uh the the dangers of smoking in bed this one was so well done it is a second to last story um the I think it should have been the very last story because I I think it ended with a much stronger punch here's what I got from this uh and once again spoilers in three two one here's what I got from this story the person who dies at the beginning of the story smoking in bed burns down they fell they were under the possession of an entity that then possesses through the smoke that she's constantly smelling the main character of the story so there's this thing in this apartment complex or whatever that is going around and possessing people and making them smoke under the covers smoke in bed and they that's how that's how I felt it is not it's kind of implied but it is never fully said um and most of the stories in here you're gonna have to do the leg work yourself the the the crumbs are there it was the same way with things we lost in the fire um their bed breadcrumbs strewn everywhere you had to piece together um and it's not so overly obtuse that you get angry about it that you dislike it at least not for me um not as much as like a jock jimps um that's her stuff is much much more ambiguous and obtuse like the grip of it um and then I forget lucky lucky number so I can't remember what her short story collection was but um it it's more you get more um from an or you kiss then you did jimps uh I I recommend both of them very highly but the uh with this one I don't I'm hoping I got it right you know I'm hoping that I that I found the breadcrumbs and that I followed them to completion I may not have but I'm hoping that I did so that's it that's like I said I didn't talk about all of the stories and that was on purpose because some of them had less of an impact for me but I highly suggest you read the entire collection because there's nothing as strong as under the black water from things we lost in the fire but every single story in here is worth a read even the one that I had issue with but that story shouldn't have been that long and that obtuse that vague like what what's the point of this is just straight horror you trying to be deeper because all the rest of your stuff is deeper so I'm sitting here trying to trying to find your I don't know I guess your intention uh the if I can talk to the author real quick um if I could find your intention for that story maybe it would be better I think it might be a better story to read more than once and that's kind of the problem because it is the longest story I think it's longer than anything in things we lost in the fire also but have you read the the dangers of smoking in bed with it's absolutely it's upside down absolutely gorgeous cover um let me know down there in the doobly-doo whether or not uh you loved it whether or not you hated it and let me know why you loved and hated it definitely tell me your favorite and your least favorite stories down there in the doobly-doo I love to read those uh I'd love to read other people's experiences so please do that down there um but until next time I have any you have been you this has been another book review I'll talk to you guys later bye