Love, Death, and Other Inconveniences by Tobias Wade

Love, Death, and Other Inconveniences Reviews

• 
  Lisa Robbins

  This was an intriguing collection of horror short stories about love and loss. Many of the authors were new to me, which was a fun experience. I did enjoy reading some of my NoSleep Podcast authors as well. There were a lot of good stories, some of them really good. That being said, this book needs an editor. At least the Kindle version does. There are a ton of simple grammatical mistakes that should have been caught: a instead of an, wrong homophones, sentences clearly missing a word, sentences with extra words. The content was really good but it definitely needs some polishing.
• 
  Melissa

  I received this book in exchange for an honest review.
  
  I loved it. Fun little short stories, some creepy, some funny. Just a great, entertaining read. Would highly recommend. And I will definitely be reading more from these authors.
• 
  Joselyn Moreno

  I received this book in exchange of an honest review.
  
  I liked some stories more than other but they were all so creppy and interesting.
  
  The way each author made they story and the characters so alive and relatable were amazing.
  
  The narrator did bring to life these little snipets of horror, I'm glad to see the genre is so alive in these times and that it can be so diverse and rich.
• 
  savedbybooks_

  17 authors 34 haunting, disturbing, shocking, amazing,short stories.
  
  this is a complete package.
• 
  Ronald Keeler

  Love, Death, and Other Inconveniences put together by Tobias Wade is a collection of thirty-four unusual depictions of what is stated in the title. Multiple authors contributed to this 381-page collection. Author’s contributions vary in number, some contributed one story, many contributed four. This review is long because I couldn’t help making a comment about each story as I read it. I tried to make sure not to write any spoilers. Some comments are about content, some are about the author’s writing and some are sarcastic. Some comments won’t make sense unless you have read the story. I found all enjoyable; I couldn’t find a waste of time anywhere among the stories.
  
  Most stories are short but in the way they engage the reader the stories take time to read. The last two by P. F. McGail invite reader imagination to the degree that maybe the reader can leave work early to spend time in appreciation of some good writing. I follow Tobias Wade as he offers two short stories per week through his author website and email list. The stories signal a break in my work routine when they arrive.
  
  The variety of stories makes me feel comfortable to give the collection a four-star Amazon rating. This is available on Kindle Unlimited, so I read it as part of my standing ten selection queue at low cost. Or it can be purchased on the Amazon site for USD 2.99 and that is OK; it is worth it. The 34 stories are:
  
  Let Me In Blair Daniels Catie was lucky to have such a caring husband. He didn’t mind getting up in the middle of the night to take care of Riley when Riley woke up crying. He was even willing to sing Riley to sleep. Wait … check that last.
  
  Magnum Opus Jesse Clark People deal with loss in different ways. For those who turn to drugs and alcohol, a portion of them will have only happy memories of those lost. In this almost philosophical but still interesting story, Clark exposes the cruelty of false memories.
  
  A Silver Lining, in the Death of Stars Jesse Clark This is another tale of near death and the images that travel with us. Brian wakes up briefly in the ICU of a local hospital. Whether due to trauma or drugs, he returns frequently to a deep sleep where he can explore his memories. Robin helps him while Brian is in a coma, helps him explore memories, but Rachael helps him with the life-saving measures that might bring him out of a coma. The winner? Read the story.
  
  Worst Day of my Life David Maloney It was the worst day and the best day. How can that be? Read the story to find out.
  
  Sexual Predators David Maloney Are you a monster? You might be. The “lady” in this story may change your perspective.
  
  End with a bang David Maloney It is only polite to pay respects when someone in the family dies. Annie will teach people respect.
  
  Fight me, Fuck me, BURN me David Maloney With Marla the sex was great. The problem was, she would not go home. She had her reasons; she had to make Daniel realize what they were.
  
  Sunset Jake Healey Harrison Samuel gives new meaning to the often heard “You can’t go home again.”
  
  In Love with the Devil's Wife Tobias Wade This selection has a lot of beautiful, complex descriptive passages. It is easy to get lost in them. Read this one slowly from start to finish to appreciate the language. And, by the way, this story does not end.
  
  Letters from my Dead Wife Tobias Wade She writes to remember but things didn’t quite work out.
  
  Redefining Love Tobias Wade True love was all about need. Jason needed her, and she needed Jason. When she noticed Jason becoming too independent and self-sustaining, she had to make a few adjustments to bring her world back into equilibrium.
  
  I used a dating site once S. H. Cooper Notice the title of this selection: “once.” Now go and read why. A nice social critique for our time.
  
  Arranged Marriage S. H. Cooper Two people who promised to marry each other might have a few problems in their relationship but this was carrying things a bit far.
  
  His Murdered Mistress S. H. Cooper Tabby couldn’t believe that husband Simon could murder anyone. Tabby was right.
  
  Auld Lang Syne S, H, Cooper Another fitting place for “Till Death Do Us Part.”
  
  Forked tongue behind a smile Kyle Alexander Jeff was not a true vegetarian despite the fact he was senior in the produce department.
  
  Mirror Well Rona Mae Don’t investigate the well too closely. You may become one with the well.
  
  My first relationship was my craziest Hayong Bak To understate, Mom does not always know best.
  
  My wife and her baby doll Hayong Bak Dolls and memories get mixed up. The Doll is the more real.
  
  A House Of Only Memories J. P. Carver Some memories stay in your mind forever. Others are just temporarily in the basement.
  
  Mile High Club J. D. McGregor Read the title, assume, and prepare to be surprised.
  
  Vela has a Gift for the World J.D. McGregor The gift will be sent to a server near you.
  
  The Proposition J. D. McGregor Trying to converge two unreconcilable pasts Roger produced a different, unreconcilable present.
  
  The Desert Stars Grant Hinton Cassie went through a lot for Michael. She was a keeper. Michael could take that to the bank. NOTE: This story is masterful in the way it shifts between scenes. It is worth reading for that alone. The content is also superior.
  
  Looking for Love Grant Hinton Sometimes I just can’t resist. My takeaway from this story is “Tinder is the night.” Apologies to anti-punners.
  
  Some Smells Shouldn't Be Ignored P. Oxford Readers sensitive to the latest in fashion perfume will like this story.
  
  My Boyfriend and I were Taken P. Oxford She was back in civilization, but Sean was still out there. She believed it was Sean. She hoped it was Sean.
  
  Last Room of the Cave Tara A. Devlin Shelley knew all about the secret Johnny carried. She had known it all her life.
  
  Somebody Loves You J. Speziale Stories children write can reveal realities adults cannot see.
  
  Baby Love Leo Bigio A mother’s love and maternal instincts can never completely die.
  
  Always Clean your Sex Doll P. F. McGrail The title to this story is great advice and should have little to do with pizza. But it does.
  
  I Can't Be Unhaunted P. F, McGail How can you win points in discourse with a ghost? Maybe the conversations can only be deferred for a time.
  
  Tits P. F. McGail This might be the scariest, most disturbing story of the collection. As the reader might deduce from the title, this is a depiction of sexual horror.
  
  The Wages of Sin is Eternal Life P. F. McGail Just like the story above was the scariest of the collection, this is the most philosophical. The best takeaway line is “No one really accepts the fact that their own death will ultimately leave the universe unmarred.” (p. 369).
  
  
• 
  Heather

  Normally when I review anthologies, I end up pointing out that one reason it’s tough for a multi-author anthology to get a 5 out of 5 is because it’s difficult for every single story to appeal to any given reader, which means most anthologies get a 4 out of 5. In the case of Love, Death, and Other Inconveniences: Collection of Horror Stories, it’s the other way around. Some stories are bound to appeal to any given reader, so that kept the rating at a 3 out of 5 instead of going lower. Honestly, I’m not really sure why this is labeled as a horror anthology. Quite a few of these are really drama rather than horror. Still, there are a few good horror stories in here.
  
  The opening story, Blair Daniels’s “Let Me In,” is one of my two favorite stories in this collection (yeah, it’s not a good sign when I can only label two stories as favorites). It’s a beautiful little nugget of horror surrounding a mysterious break-in at a house. My other favorite is P. Oxford’s “Some Smells Shouldn’t Be Ignored,” in which an artist who just moved in with her boyfriend hears rats in the walls, and then starts to smell something horrid. A short, chilling read. Both stories go just far enough for maximum chills, and leave all the right questions unanswered.
  
  The editor of this anthology must really love stories about men whose girlfriends (or wives) die and then have to help them move on from beyond the grave, because there are a lot of variations on that theme in here (two of them are even by the same author, and there are three of them in a row). The women in most of these stories serve as nothing more than agents of change for the men they leave behind. Another theme is that women who are sexually aggressive often turn out to be monsters. We’re really racking up the bad female tropes here. There’s also a story in which a female scientist seemingly randomly decides to give her scientific subject the best sex ever because… why, exactly? There’s a story about “The Devil’s Wife” that has an intriguing setup, but again, it’s another story of female-solely-as-agent-of-male-change.
  
  At least “Letters From My Dead Wife” handles the dead loved one in a very different and much more original manner than most of the other stories do. “A House of Only Memories” by J.P. Carver is another dead wife story that has a little more of interest to it than some of the earlier ones. Tara A. Devlin’s “Last Room of the Cave” is yet another dead-woman-as-agent-of-male-change, but at least it has a monster in it and a really interesting secret.
  
  Many of these authors have two, three, or even four stories in here, and I don’t think that was a great idea. In many cases it seemed pretty obvious that one of an author’s stories was noticeably better than the other(s). I really liked J.D. McGregor’s “Mile High Club,” for instance, but his other two stories didn’t really do it for me. (I felt like one was mostly just weird, and the other elided over some details that were necessary to the story.) However, two stories that I thought were quite good were both by Hayong Bak, “My First Relationship Was My Craziest” and “My Wife and Her Baby Doll.” Both went in fascinating directions.
  
  Note one major formatting error: there’s a long duplicated passage in the middle of Grant Hinton’s “The Desert Stars.” I definitely saw this story as more of a thriller than a horror story. Hinton’s “Looking for Love” (involving some Tinder dating) definitely fit the horror milieu.
  
  A couple of otherwise-good stories gave us too-confusing endings. I don’t mind some ambiguity or unanswered questions, but it’s possible to take that too far. P. Oxford’s “My Boyfriend And I Were Taken” falls into this category, which is a shame, because otherwise it was a good story.
  
  I’d say the anthology as a whole was just okay. Luckily it has a few individual stories that make me glad I read it anyway.
  
  Content note: sex, mild gore, sex with produce, reference to off-screen rape, and one incidence of animal harm.
  
  
  Original review posted on my blog:
  http://www.errantdreams.com/2020/04/r...
• 
  Daisy

  Stories left me wanting for a Part 2
  
  I loved the stories in this anthology so much I feel it needs a Part 2. And...I found myself searching through each writer and ended up purchasing anthologies from each author...so I now own individual anthology books by Tobias Wade, Blair Daniels, and so much more. Only thing I wished is They list the stories as an interactive table but it only has an interactive content table for the writers...so I had to scroll through some stories i wanted to reread. Book has a total of 34 short stories. Stories were very unpredictable, and I like them all but some more than others that I felt like rereading again. The authors and the stories are as follows:
  
  Blair Daniels- Let Me In
  Jesse Clark- Magnum Opus, A Silver Lining in the Death of Stars
  David Maloney- Worst Day of My Life, Sexual Predators, End with a Bang; Fight Me..Burn Me..Fuck Me
  Jake Healy- Sunset
  Tobias Wade- Redifining Love, In Love with the Devil's Wife, Letters From my Dead Wife
  S.H. Copper- I Used a Dating Site Once, Arranged Marriage, His Murdered Mistress, Auld Lang Syne
  Kyle Alexander- Forked Tongue, Behind a Smile
  Rona Mae- Mirror Well
  Hayong Bak- My First Relationship was my Craziest, My Wife and Her Baby Doll
  J.P. Carver- A House of Only Memories
  J.D. McGregor - Mile High Club, Vela Has a Gift For the World, The Proposition
  Grant Hinton- The Desert Stars, Looking for Love
  P Oxford- Some Smells shouldn't be Ignored, My Boyfriend and I were Taken
  Tara A. Devlin- Last Room of the Cave
  J. Speziale- Somebody Loves You
  Leo Bigio- Baby Love
  P.F. McGrail- Always Clean your Sex Doll, I Can't Be Unhaunted, Tits, The Wages of Sin is Eternal Life
  
  
  These are stories of love gone very very wrong, revenge, and some with a tinge of sci fi twilight zone kind of fealing....kind of reminds me of stories you'd watch on The Outer Limits or Tales From the Crypt and with a punch of similarities to Urban Legends meets creepy suburbicon folk tales. I love Haunted House Publishing Books but I wished they can one day make these stories into Horror Comics or some illustrations.
• 
  Miranda Starmz

  Disclaimer: I received the e-book version for free in exchange for an honest review.
  
  A mixed collection for a mixed review.
  
  To be honest, I didn't expect to be so underwhelmed by these stories, considering the gems that can be found in /r/NoSleep. The writing styles of all the authors were compelling enough to keep me turning the page, in a similar way that Reddit and simple fluff can engage you. However, some of the authors were better at showing (not telling) than others, and not all of the stories were particularly original or even scary.
  
  More than one author tried to do the integrated-flashbacks-across-paragraph-breaks thing, which I understand as a stylistic device (and have probably done something similar in my own writing before), but I think they're effective when used in moderation rather than in long blocks of writing. Since there isn't the visual impact of a movie, the series-of-time-jumps is best saved for quick successions of action. There was also a lot of, "dead person comes back (or appears to)", which can get a bit tiring if perhaps unavoidable since there's a higher chance of repetition in a collection. I was also a little miffed, if not surprised, by the dominance of heterosexuality. Heterosexuality is the majority and many authors write what they know, but when you get 4 stories in a row of, y'know, just a guy and a girl getting it on, it's not only boring but unrepresentative of the diversity that is present in the world.
  
  The shorter stories were hit-or-miss, but always enjoyable as a diversion even if they had little lasting impact. Unfortunately, that wasn't so much the case with the longer ones. A few of the longer stories could be anti-climatic, perhaps due to their predictability, but that would cause more frustration than with the two- or three-pagers, since there was less time invested with the latter. See: "Sexual Predators" vs "Letters From My Dead Wife"
  
  I'm glad for the diversity of the collection, ranging from suspenseful supernatural to mundane psychological, but it did make the book as a whole seem a little unfocused. The title explains, of course, the prevalence of romance - but I'd argue that not all of the stories had romantic themes, but rather other kinds of love (self-love, perhaps) or obsession. As such, at times I would finish a story and be a bit confused as to how it fit in thematically.
  
  Some of my favourites: "Arranged Marriage", "I Used A Dating Site Once", "Mirror Well", "A Silver Lining, in the Death of Stars" (though I'm not sure if this is only because I preferred it to "Magnum Opus")
• 
  Monita Mohan

  This was another audiobook languishing in my collection. No clue how it got there or why. Aside from the first story, which had a classic horror vibe - plus it was short and sweet - all the stories were terrible.
  
  I partially say this as someone who isn’t a fan of gore or body horror. But mostly, the reason I actively hated this book was because the majority of the points of view were from straight male characters (and many of the stories seemed to have been written by straight men as well) and the stories were regressive and archaic.
  
  The women were all written in excruciating detail - each one a more perfect example of conventional beauty than the last. Most of the women were little more than objects of lust; not even of affection. The women were either victims or horrifying monsters hiding beneath gorgeous bodies. The stories really seemed to feed into men’s fears of women, rather than general horror. It was ridiculous when each story seemed to follow a similar pattern of this extremely beautiful girl/woman entering the male character’s life and either dying or being killed or turning out to be a monster.
  
  I really didn’t care for this collection. It was way too much of the same thing over and over again.
• 
  Mads Saunders

  *Just a little disclaimer, I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*
  
  For starters, I would like to thank Tobias and the other authors for the opportunity to have early access to their book of short stories 'Love, Death and Other Inconveniences'. Honestly, this is the first book that I've read in a long time that I genuinely had fun reading. It is clear that all of the authors have a passion for writing and had as much of a good time writing these stories as I did reading them. I flew through this book in one sitting and in a matter of hours. 'Love, Death and Other Inconveniences' is an imaginative and ingenious way to introduce new talent to the horror writing community. There really isn't much I can fault with this book other than a few minor spelling errors throughout, as well as slight repetitiveness or cliché tropes throughout (although this latter point wasn't much of an issue with me as a lot of good horror media can use clichéd story lines).
  
  In saying all of this, I can't wait to see what Tobias and the others come up with next and I wish you all the best of luck in your future projects! :)
• 
  Robin Corbin

  *I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*
  
  Although the stories in this book were not all scary, I enjoyed all of them. It's a good mix of horror, supernatural, and creative mindtwists. I've been a HUGE fan of Tobias Wade for awhile, and now I've found a couple more authors to follow because of this collection.
• 
  Barb VanderWel

  I love this & I can't wait for more.
  I will be also leaving a review on Goodreads @ Amazon.
  And letting everyone know about it.
  So i gave it a 5 Stars.
• 
  Shannon

  Quite a blende
  
  The issue with any collection is the variation in quality from author to author. Some great ideas paired up with terrible spelling, so just average overall.
• 
  Trina

  Each story in this collection was worth reading.
• 
  gilleoin

  Awesome horror anthology by various authors. Some are quite gruesome, but an excellent read.
• 
  jody scheppmann

  On the favorites list
  
  I like the short story books and this is one of the best I've read in a long time....new material not just new twists on old tales
• 
  Laura

  A lack lustre collection of “just ok” stories. A real disappointment that I cannot recommend to any fans of genuine horror novels and short story collections.
• 
  Mandy Tuparan

  I remembered reading this few years ago and felt so many emotions!
• 
  Diana Luque Figueroa

  All the stories caught me and left me wanting more. I do recommend it if you love horror and love stories together. this is your book.
• 
  Sharra

  Excellent collection of shorts. I enjoyed the twists and turns of them all.. Some truly unique horror!
• 
  Mandy Mandy

  My favorite genres rolled into one mind-blowing masterpiece! Made me cry, cringed and love even more. Totally worth the read.
• 
  Angela Kalnins

  Very impressed, actually, with this author's short stories.
• 
  Abice07

  Such a nice take on the horrors, sadness, elation, and very scary moments we humans can feel when it comes to love. Love comes in many forms and almost all of the time it's wonderful feeling. Though in many of these tales, love is what makes people vulnerable and can lead to their demise. There are also several heartwarming stories that make the eyes water and has you hoping for the best possible outcome.
  Overall these short stories were well written and curated in this collection. A must read for those who enjoy a bit of humanity with their horror.
• 
  Noelle Brake

  I loved this book! I love anthology short stories, especially ones with themes, like love or holidays. My favorite story was Mike High Club, even though all of them were really good.
  
  I love stories with a surprise ending, and when you think MHC, you don't think stabbing. Very good twist and I love the narration!