The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls is the debut horror short story collection of Angela Sylvaine, which will be published by Dark Matter INK. A compilation of powerful stories that all pivot around girls put in difficult situations, which push them towards their limit, written in a gorgeous prose.

It is difficult to qualify many of them due to how their length varies, from flash fiction territory to novelettes, but all equally intense, putting those girls in the spot where the society that should protect them can't help or even becomes part of that problem; a theme that runs in parallel with the current politic developments in some countries.

Supernatural things are involved in many of them, but we can see how at the end, it's only the agency of the characters their way to escape from that cycle they are immersed. I found especially interesting Antifreezer and Sweet Pea, one of the longest in the anthology, but whose ending almost stops my heart. Those with mixed endings stayed with me after finishing the collection.

If you are looking for a great palate cleanser, putting the focus on girls and horror, The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls is an excellent collection, a proof of Sylvaine's talent as author.