Engstrom, Elizabeth - Nightmare Flower

I should have liked this collection; I wanted to like this collection. But I couldn’t, for a number of reasons.
The stories, by and large, have a remote, cool tone, as if each narrator was disengaged. Consequently, I never felt sympathetic with characters, let alone their activities.

Two titles, “Nightwind” and “Rain”, pits characters against elemental weather, although I wondered, what was the point of each?

I won’t kick other tales, wasting your time and mine.

The last, longest, and finest, is the novella “Project Stone”. This seems more a conspiracy thriller than horror yarn. An anxiety ridden urbanite finds refuge in a gated desert enclave. Peace of mind comes with a price, of which she contentedly ignores. This feels like a very 90’s take, akin to an “X-Files” episode from that period.

Valencourt books are always affordable and worth a look, but, for me, this was wet powder.