So this is another book I accumulated from Paperbacks From Hell, and it’s really two novellas. When I read the excerpt, I was hooked because the first story reminded me of Room, which terrified and captured me. I guess one of my fundamental fears is being trapped in a single room all alone. But this story predates Room by thirty, forty years?

A sixteen-year-old woman is accidentally trapped in a network of caves underneath a farm after a cellar door closes on her. She has no light and no companions. Only brackish water and slugs and fungus to eat. Yet somehow she lives and gives birth to a child and raises it. It’s so eerie and it moves along at a breakneck clip. Can you imagine what Morlocks these people must look like?

The second story is less scary. It’s about a mentally deficient (in the eighties, she would have been called “retarded” but apparently we don’t use that word anymore) woman who slowly starts to recover her faculties (kind of a Flowers for Algernon thing) through the power of… love? I didn’t like this one as much because it’s not scary and it ends abruptly.

These books are great because they remind me of what the horror genre must have been in its heyday when you had Stephen King leading the charge for a ton of great authors and intriguing concepts. But when the eighties left and the yuppies deserted us and the coke blew away in the wind, King was the only one left remembered. ( )

This book contains two novellas/short stories.

The best thing I can say about the first one is that it's short. I ended up DNFing the second story after reading 5 or so chapters. Neither one was compelling. Both were quite boring and sad, and not really horror in my opinion

A 16-year old newlywed, Sally Ann, living on a farm finds herself (accidentally? intentionally?) locked inside an old well complex connected to a vast underground network of caves with underground lakes and streams. Some time later, after she is unable to find a way out, she gives birth to a son, Clinton.

A visitor, whether real or imagined, I do not know, assists with the delivery of her baby.

Some unknown time after she has given birth to Clinton (time elapsed between chapters), she has a conversation with her son about what the world "up there" is like. She has a tough time explaining concepts like "light" and "sight" to someone who has experienced neither, since they live in the pitch black darkness of the caves. Clinton has no frame of reference to conceptualize what she means—except when he dreams. And if you've ever been inside a cave and turned off your headlamps, you know exactly how dreadful the darkness, even temporary as it is, can be.

Even later, when Sally Ann decides to find a way out no matter what, Clinton argues with her, telling her he doesn't believe in "his Dad" or some "world up there". And why would he, when all he has ever known his whole life is the darkness of the caves? In the caves he has everything he needs, slugs and fish to eat, fresh water to drink and swim in? Why would he want anything "up there", assuming "up there" even exists?

What a profound metaphor Engstrom creates in this underground world of darkness. Yes, when darkness loves us, as it has loved Sally Ann and Clinton for so long, people tend to choose the darkness over light.

I look forward to reading more of Elizabeth Engstrom's writing, including the second novella, "Beauty Is. . .", that completes the "Two Chilling Tales" in When Darkness Loves Us. ( )

This book contains two novellas/short stories.

The best thing I can say about the first one is that it's short. I ended up DNFing the second story after reading 5 or so chapters. Neither one was compelling. Both were quite boring and sad, and not really horror in my opinion. ( )

WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US gets ALL the stars and maybe even a few planets!

I'm going to keep this review short and I'll tell you why. A friend has been telling me for years how great this book is, but I didn't know anything about it, other than it contained two novella length stories. I think "going in blind" is the best way to attack this volume. I had no preconceptions as to what was going to happen, what the stories were about or anything at all, really.

I will say the following: both of these tales feature women as the protagonists. These women are tough, they're fighters, and they're brave. They make the most of what they have and try not to complain. Which makes it all the more difficult for the reader when the stories turn, as they both do.

A word about the writing-it was beautiful at times. Often, it was beautiful and horrific all at once, which must be a hard thing to pull off, because even reading as much as I do, I rarely come across that perfect, vivid style. I'm not usually a fan of flowery writing but I submit this as a perfect paragraph, descriptive but not overly so, resulting in a tight little description of the seasons on a rural farm:

"Winter was a mean ogre, dangerous and ugly, yet his reign was oddly cozy and comfortable as they rested during this respite from the sweltering summer. Spring was a baby bunny, soft and warm, but skittish, and able to dash into frantic motion in less than a heartbeat of time. Spring was clean. Then summer again, a paper queen of vivid reds, purples and greens, fading in the sunlight, turning all the colors a sickly yellow while the paper itself became crisp and brittle. Autumn was a deer, beautiful and swift. And winter had come again."

This book was like autumn, actually, (at least it is the way Ms. Engstrom described it), beautiful and swift. And horrific and heartbreaking. And all the other words that describe the type of read that never leaves you. I don't know what else to say other than:

My HIGHEST recommendation!

*Thank you to Valancourt Books for the e-ARC for review consideration. I considered it and said Hell, yeah!*

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