Title: Horrors Untold Vol 5

Author: Matt Wildasin

Release date: May 19th, 2022

It was only recently that I discovered Wildasin’s writing, with his co-authored piece ‘Baggage’ (alongside the awesome Simon Paul Wilson), which was a ton of fun and was a bigger story than the length of pages. It really caught me off guard with where it went and I was excited to read more of both authors.

When Wildasin reached out to see if I’d be up for an ARC of his next collection ‘Horrors Untold Vol 5,’ I said absolutely – I’d heard great things about the first four entries, and even though I’d not read them, I was excited to see just what Matt was getting up to within these releases.

What I liked: ‘Horrors Untold Vol 5’ features 8 stories of varying length from a flash fiction single pager to a couple pushing into novella length. It makes for a great time for the reader as nothing seems repetitive or forced into a word count parameter.

The highlights for me were;

• Hall’s Tower – This one followed friends Matt and Will as they hiked into an ‘off the map’ abandoned location to see if all the rumors about ‘Hall’s Tower’ were true. You know how this one goes. If it’s in a horror collection – the rumors are true!
• Turkey Massacre – This story was a ton of fun. Something falls from the sky and mutates the turkey’s at a local free range turkey farm. Chaos and bloodshed ensue.
• Crazy Cat Lady – A great take on the ‘back from the dead’ zombie narrative. This one follows a lady, her cats and her efforts to keep everyone fed.

Overall, Wildasin gives us some really great takes on different storylines and even the flash fiction piece ‘Inevitable’ was poignant.

What I didn’t like: As with each collection of stories, some stories will work more than others. I’m personally not a big fan of Christmas/Santa horror stories typically (ironic I know, considering I had a story in an Xmas themed horror anthology), so that one was decent, but not one I would usually go out of my way to discover.

Why you should buy this: It’s always exciting to find new authors who have a solid writing voice and easy prose to read. I don’t say that as an offensive thing – I mean his writing flows and you get lost within the story quickly. Judging from both the co-authored ‘Baggage’ and this collection, I’ll need to read more Wildasin and I hope if you read this review, you’ll also dive into his catalog and check out his work!

This was a solid collection and shows his range and versatility really nicely.

4/5