It instantly reminded me of Tell Me I'm Worthless but I feel that it felt a lot more gimmicky in this book/didn't work/wasn't necessary for this story whereas in Rumfitt's novel, it complemented the story? I enjoyed the account of a Mexican holiday gone wrong in more ways than might have been imagined in 'Suckers'; and the unexpected legacy left to the narrator of 'The Bequest' by a deceased aunt. By turns unsettling, funny and fiercely intelligent, Parallel Hells is a queer carnival of monsters and masks. It was a brilliant take on friendship and connection, found family, shame, and secrecy, all themes familiar to queer stories but twisted into a surprisingly tender demonic little package. Whenever I read short story collections and I see themes recurring again and again I always wonder whether that is a conscious choice by the author and something used to deliberately tie the collection together, or whether that cropping up in stories is just reflective of the authors' life experiences and who they are as a person.

My favourite stories included ‘Raw Pork and Opium’ and ‘Lick the Dust’ and I will probably reread them in the future. Parallel Hells will not disappoint any connoisseur of the gothic in its most fulsome and unapologetic sense. This book is best consumed in multiple sittings, but with the rule of reading a full story every time. The horror in this collection is less overt than you might be expecting; these aren’t stories that will make you squeamish, they’re stories that will wake you up in the middle of the night.The stories and characters run parallel to each other, but these themes are repeatedly reworked in surprising ways throughout the collection to give each narrative its little slice of hell. Even stories I found less enchanting were still a good read, and while I didn't connect as much with all of them none felt like filler, which is always a worry with any collection.

She squeezes into the dark space, pursuing a dot of light on the other side of the wall, beyond which, the neighbour’s party thrives.I have given this book three stars because for me they represent not a comment on the author's writing but on the failure of the stories in this collection to match up to the praise and promotion they have received. Favorite stories from this collection included: “A Wolf in the Temple,” “Lipless Grin,” “Hags,” “No Dominion,” and “Saplings. I’m so glad that spooky queer books seem to be more abundant these past few years as I’ve definitely found a new favourite genre.

I think my main frustration came from the fact that lots of the stories felt more like concepts or first chapters than fully rounded out and finished short stories. As Luke is panting, hiding under a table to shelter from his pursuer, in the same breath, the reader sees Carly tracing her lover’s concaves with her tongue. It is a sentiment that Craig, Ridgeway, and all bibliophiles share: the pleasure of being able to vividly feed off other people’s dramatics, like a demon, but then close the book without consequence once we’ve got our fill. These are characters in the background of someone else’s story, who are later given the chance to be the main character in their own. The short, twisted tales collected in Leon Craig's Parallel Hells have a laconic elegance that's both chilling and pleasurable .

Raw pork and opium has one of the more interesting styles of writing explored however the context of the story leaves you going. There wasn't a single story in here I disliked, and very very little I could fault this story on at all. Frustrated by Luke’s trite ignorance, Carly goes to “find the rest of the party or I can find out how it feels to murder somebody”. I bought this debut of thirteen short stories after hearing the author speak at the Jewish Book Festival and I’m so glad I did.

You have this story telling you about the demon's past, their relationship with their friends, their guilt over lying and presenting themselves as a human to people they've genuinely come to like, and then talks about shame as a negative emotion. One thing I will say is that one of the short stories played with formatting and had two simultaneous narratives occurring at once.Exhausted from listening to a far-fetched anecdote, Maria “felt at once that this was fascinating, and interesting, that it was something of a privilege to be trusted with it, and also that there was something wrong about it all, something that wasn’t entirely decent. We watch David as he eventually discovers pornographic photos of the couple: “In the mirror there is a reflection of a fourth man, naked, with an erection, holding the phone that is taking the photos.