Hungry For You by A.M. Harte

Hungry For You by AM Harte

“There is no greater drug than relationships; there is no sweeter death than love.”

Love is horrible. It’s ruthless, messy, mind-altering, and raw. It takes no prisoners. It chews you up and spits you out and leaves you for dead. Love is, you could say, very much like a zombie.

In this haunting short story collection, anything is possible—a dying musician turns to tea for inspiration; a police sergeant struggles with a very unusual victim; a young wife is trapped in a house hiding unimaginable evil….

With Hungry For You, A.M. Harte explores the disturbing and delightful in an anthology that unearths the thin boundary between love and death.

 

Full Disclosure: I didn’t spend money to acquire this book. I just happen to be exceptionally fortunate enough to know really awesome writers who in turn know other writers, or who happen to stumble upon my reviews of work by writers they know and think “I need to send my books to her.”  Kait Nolan, thank you, whether you know what for or not. 🙂 Let’s just leave it at being awesome?

My frustration with Anthologies is very much like Heather Faville’s: I. Want. More.

Short stories are such huge teases.

Having said that, this haunting collection of short stories left me with an insatiable appetite. But, um, not for human flesh, or, you know, braaaaaaaaaaaains. Nope, I’ve got a fever. And the only thing that can cure it? Is more work by A.M. Harte.

Although, if you want to throw in some cowbell, that’d be nice too.

Right. Less irreverence, more review.

Ms. Harte really took Zombies to a whole new level for me. She took the mythos, turned it on it’s head, and spun it right round. Multiple times. Threw them all in a box and then went way, way out of the box. Especially when you consider that the entire collection are little more than love stories.(She said, as if love stories are somehow small, fragile things she knows they’re not.)

Ms. Harte writes with such beautiful subtlety that I really needed to pace myself reading Hungry For You. I could not go through the stories at a dead sprint, I needed time to let the stories simmer in, to really take in the full effect of the passion that drove the majority of the stories. It was a winding experience.  I loved it!

Because these were the sort of stories I’d been hoping to get when I revamped this blog under ‘Fiction with a Dark Side’. This exploration of the darker side of love, the lighter side of death, the grays and in betweens.

Usually with anthologies, I like to go through the stories one by one and tell my readers here why I liked them. I’d really like to do that now but the temptation to give something away is just two great. One of the best things about Hungry For You is the subtle, yet powerful twists. I read each slowly, with awe, trying to anticipate ‘how is she going to do it this time’, and often than not, I failed, delightedly. Too caught up in the stories.

Well, ok. I totally saw how Swimming Lesson was going to end but I’m pretty sure she just threw that one in there so we can feel smart for figuring it out.

I really enjoyed every single story (all eleven of them!)-because every single story reeked of creativity and bit of tragedy and oh-don’t act like you all don’t know I’m a hopeless romantic complete masochist.

However my Favorites were:

Hungry For You – Yep! The Antho’s name sake is a story. “A police sergeant struggles with a very unusual victim…”

A Prayer to Garlic- This one is just so delightfully quirky I can’t even think of a way to describe it without completely ruining it.

Dead Man’s Rose – “A young wife is trapped in a house hiding unimaginable evil….”

The Perfect Song-“A dying musician turns to tea for inspiration.” Were I forced to choose, I would have to pick this one as my favorite. One of the driving concepts behind it-involving tea- just tickled the heck out of me and I think any writer, aspiring or pro, could relate to the protagonist’s frustration.

This a brilliant collection that I recommend to any Zombie lovers (especially those of you that like to see new takes on the mythology, you’ll get them in spades in Hungry For You ) , those of us who like our fiction on the dark side, or for readers who love love, no matter what it does to you.

Hungry For You is available at Amazon Kindle stores Us and UK, and Smashwords, and is set to release in paperback in March! (When I hope to have some money to snatch it up in my hot little hands with.)