Title: Twisted Reunion
Author: Mark Tullius
Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Thriller
Format: Ebook
Publication Date: December 2015
Pages: 236

Synopsis (Goodreads): "Plunge deep into darkness with 28 terrifying tales. Explore heartache, happiness, and horror in this collection of short stories by Mark Tullius, the author of 25 Perfect Days, named one of IndieReader's Best Indie Books for 2013.

This collection is composed of all the stories in Each Dawn I Die, Every One's Lethal, and Repackaged Presents, plus two bonus stories."

Experience chills as you read these stories and more:
• A pornographer's horrific early morning ritual.
• A beautiful baby boy who knows what he wants.
• An engineer sees life on the other side of the tracks.
• A drug run goes awry.
• A family's unique Christmas tradition.
• An artist whose paintings become reality.
• A man who longs to rid himself of an annoying companion.
• A child terrified by things that slither and ooze in the night.
• Come join a soldier on the run in the jungle.
• An old man's quest for the perfect photo.
• A woman who sniffs out killers.
• A life coach whose own brand of “therapy” goes way beyond cruel and unusual.
• A young man who can't let go of the past.

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My rating: 4 / 5 ★

First and foremost, I would like to thank Mark Tullius and @BookTasters on Twitter for providing me with an ebook copy of Twisted Reunion in exchange for an honest review. I apologise for taking too long to complete the book and come up with this review.

Although I do love reading short stories because of how convenient they are, I am usually not too fond of reading a short story collection in one go, because I tend to lose focus due to too many different characters, and it gets to a point where I simply don't care about any of the characters anymore. This is one of the reasons why it took a while for me to digest Twisted Reunion.

I would honestly say that I have some mixed feelings over this short story collection. I'm quite a fan of horror reads, and I would say that even though the stories were not that terrifying, they are undeniably horrific if it would to be happen in reality. Mark Tullius combined several supernatural elements with psychopathic human beings, making most of the horrors enjoyable to be read. Unfortunately, I couldn't find myself enjoying all the stories to the most. Some of them had characters that I couldn't even comprehend or empathise with, while a few others just left me baffled as to what I just read.

But for more than half of the short stories in this collection, I truly enjoyed them to bits. The one where "an artist whose paintings become reality" particularly left the best impression on me, mainly because of how beautiful it seemed to hint at first, but things slowly went down to hell once the artist finished her paintings. Another one that was very memorable to me was where "a man who longs to rid himself of an annoying companion". I thought I had an idea of what their relationship was supposed to be at first, but then I was proved absolutely wrong at the end and it just made the whole story make sense in a better way.

Overall, I did enjoy reading Twisted Reunion a lot. I think that Mark Tullius is a great writer, and I would love to read more stories (especially horrors) from him in the future. Most of the stories, if not all, involved a huge deal of violence and horrific events, so if you're comfortable with that, then this book would be perfect for you!



The bartender whistled, tossed a sharpened rail spike in the air as he made his way over. 
The forms of disfigured patrons advanced upon the entrance that would never be an exit.


Till next time ♡ Love, Aishah Humaira'



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