Title: No One Can Help You: Tales of Lost Children and Other Nightmares

Author: Ruth Anna Evans

Release date: May 28th, 2022

Another release that came onto my radar recently when I tweeted that I was here to help folks (good grief how arrogant does that sound! Apologies, not my intentions at all!) if they were trying to get some reviews or blurbs etc, ‘No One Can Help You: Tales of Lost Children and Other Nightmares,’ comes with a warning at the beginning that there are a number of triggers within, and I have to say – even with those triggers, the stories still managed to unnerve me and hit a number of emotions I wasn’t expecting.

What I liked: Short story collections have a tendency to either really work or fall flat and I have to say, it shows how solid of a writer Evans is that this one works well and remained solid throughout.

The stories all deal with oddities and extremes and it’s because of that pairing that we see the strengths in the stories.

Highlights for me were:

‘Nicholas is Gone’ – this story was about an alcoholic mom, who ends up becoming homeless with her son. After some more bad decisions, they run into an older man who wants to help them, but has a sinister reason. This story starts out horribly, horribly sad and doesn’t get much brighter.

‘Sight of Blood’ – this one was really fascinating. A police officer begins to have horrible visions, realizing that they are visions showing him incidents to come, but no matter what he tries to do, he simply can’t seem to change the future. Really well done and the character was flawed but one you wanted to root for.

‘Missing’ – this one starts out innocently enough, when a young boy sees the housekeeper start to take some of his things. The reasoning and resulting actions were terrifying and completely unhinged, which is why this one works so well.

‘The Surprise’ – this story shoots out of the gates with Noah’s step dad taking him and declaring that a coven is going to eat him. The atmosphere in this one was electric with the gnawing sense that even though things were bad, they could suddenly get worse.

Every story had a palpable energy to it, which was great and even the shorter ones hummed along SEE: Hypochondriac, which works well to keep the readers always uneasy.

What I didn’t like: As with all collections, some stories just may not connect with the reader. For me, there was a few that started out great and then went somewhere I just wasn’t excited about. The main example of that would be ‘Phantom Pain.’ This started out as one of the best Body Horror stories I have read in some time, where something odd was happening and getting worse by the sentence. But then it took a turn and seemed to go into full Bizarro territory, which just didn’t connect.

Why you should buy this: This is a rock solid collection that had me gripped from story one. Ruth Anna Evans delivers some truly dark and terrible moments and has a willingness to make extremely flawed characters as the ones that we need to root for, and that in and of itself is a tough act.

Had a blast with these stories and if you’re looking for a great collection to check out, look no further!

4/5