Review of The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales by Alex Kingsley
The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales by Alex Kingsley (2023) is dark and hilarious in equal parts, weaving seamlessly between the two, sometimes even in the same story. A number of the stories are previously published, but the collection also includes some new stories as well.
As with many collections, I enjoyed the majority of the stories, but some stuck out as favorites. The titular story, “The Strange Garden,” epitomizes the swing between dark and hilarious, with a side helping of adorable. Both “What I Wouldn’t Do for Annie” and “His Name is Chad” contain dark subject matter (there are content notes for the collection at the beginning of the book), but their protagonists are both so relatable that I loved reading their stories. My absolute favorite, though, was “Dev Fielding and the Call of the In Between,” which is the longest story in the collection, but it kept me turning the pages all the way through to its bittersweet conclusion.
If you love stories that have very personable narrators dealing with dark subjects with some humor, you’ll love The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales. This was a quick read for me because I absolutely couldn’t put it down!
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