I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of this from the publisher, and it's going straight on my list of favourites. It's absolutely outstanding, a really focused collection where all the stories have a shared and simple theme: teen girls, and how they survive being the protagonists of fairy tales and slasher films. I love horror, and make no mistake: the stories here are horror stories. They're tragic, often bleak, and consistently bloody - but what separates them from a lot of horror stories of the type is that each story is careful to contain genuine kindness and unselfish love. They're not just horrifying, they're hopeful, and I love that.

I've been trying to decide which of the ten stories here is my favourite, and it's an uphill battle. There's not a single one of them that's less than excellent, so picking a favourite is nearly impossible. I think, however, that I have to give the edge to the opening story, "Some Kind of Blood-Soaked Future," in which the sole survivor of a slaughter tries to take on the responsibility of preventing future massacres, and then learns to lay that responsibility down again. I just love that ending: the determined renunciation not of trauma, but of the idea that trauma is the sole definition of future life.