This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2024, but sadly it fell completely flat for me. I couldn’t finish this collection.

Firstly, I do want to mention something that I did enjoy. I absolutely loved the intro to the collection. It gave the collection as a whole purpose and an even deeper story! The intro really had me excited for the stories! However, this book is not what I thought it would be…

I was expecting this collection to be horror stories that empowered people of color, but these stories just center whiteness & racial trauma. I probably should have known from the title that the collection would center whiteness, but I genuinely thought this collection would flip the common trope of Black people & people of color dying first in horror on its head, but it didn’t. 

Every story is about racism or wanting to be white/fit in with white people. Why do all of these characters of color have such racist friends? I will mention that I had the privilege of growing up as a Black person in almost exclusively predominantly Black experiences. All of my schools were predominantly Black, I was hardly ever a minority surrounded by white people. So, maybe that’s why I don’t understand choosing to be friends with or date racists. But, that just felt unbelievable to me.

Another thing that bothered me is this: why does the white guy have to be racist to die first in EVERY story??? In all the movies and books where the Black person or person of color dies first, they didn’t have to deserve it. They were killed first whether they were good people or not. So, what bothers me is that it seems like this book feels the need to justify the white guy’s death with him always being racist. If we, Black people & POC, in these circumstances never have to deserve our death to be murdered, what makes the white guy any different? The white guy can just die without being racist, with no justification, just like us for all these years. THAT is how you turn the trope on its head.

Those things just made this collection disappointing for me as a Black reader CRAVING more BIPOC horror where WE are centered. I usually don’t read racism horror, I see enough of racism in real life, so I couldn’t enjoy this collection with so much blatant racism & micro aggressions in every single story without being prepared for that. Maybe one day I’ll come back to this knowing that it is racism horror and enjoy it more because I’ll be prepared for the anger and annoyance that comes with it, but for now, I won’t be continuing.

side note: out of all the stories I read, I can say that I did enjoy H. E. Edgmon’s story Best Served Cold!

Thank you Tor Teen and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.