First, it’s worth clarifying that this edition of the book in fact contains two novellas:

1. When Darkness Loves Us, a fairly outrageous little thing about a woman who gets lost in an underground tunnel and eventually makes a new life for herself in it;

2. Beauty Is…, a serviceable horror story that mashes up Carrie with Flowers For Algernon.

This wasn’t mentioned anywhere when I bought the book, so I was extremely confused when I turned the page and book 1 turned into book 2.

Darkness has an idea I can only call “cute,” in a structural way; the story itself is a nasty, vicious and cruel. That’s not necessarily a problem for me, nor is its wholly preposterous storyline, but it’s also written with a dull, rushing-to-the-plot, clumsy, amateur’s pen. 2 stars.

Beauty is a far better structured story, and it’s genuinely touching in places (since it’s ALMOST populated by believable human beings.) It’s still a little underbaked and stylistically artless for the most part.

A fun enough book, but is it a major rediscovery of 80s horror? Nah.