Abyss of Nightmares – Stevie Hostetter

3 stars

I’m not a huge poetry reader, but I like to delve into horror poetry every so often because I think it’s more of a challenging medium to invoke fear and anxiety than a novella or a full novel and there’s so many different things you can do when writing horror poems.

Stevie has put together a collection of poems featuring the ABCs of phobias. It’s a unique subject as each poem is written from the point-of-view of the various phobias. I really enjoyed the learning aspect of this as there were quite a few that I didn’t know the actual names for, and some fun fictional ones also!

Where I think this fell short is in its descriptors. A lot of the depictions of anxiety felt repetitive and over-used. I think some of the poems would’ve brought up more of those feelings if the author had dived deeper into those phobias and really explored what makes them tick.

I’d read more from this author. I think there’s a second book in this series, I’ll definitely have to check it out sometime!