4.5 stars

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of Valente and her Fairyland series. I find her writing to be lush and evocative and I think she is so smart about characters and plots. Basically, I love her so I was predisposed to love this, especially because I love hero stories and comics.

Here, Valente takes the well-worn trope of the woman in the refrigerator, of the women killed in the service of a male hero's plot, and she gives them a story. Stories that are often hilarious for their tongue-in-cheek commentary (she calls Batman-wannabe "leatherjock emo fuckmuppet...") and heart-breaking for the women who suffer the same fate in the end. They die and they are telling their stories linked to the Hell Hath Club, a brilliant way to connect each story to the next.

I think if you come into this expecting her to subvert, you may be disappointed? All the stories are almost all on the nose of what you would expect them to me: women wronged in connection to the superpowered men who loved them. The point is that these stories are never even told or examined.

There were a couple of stories that got a little too convoluted or wordy for me. I found myself rereading sections because I didn't quite follow the action. For that reason and others, this is definitely a bunch of stories I would love to revisit.