Kiss Me Deadly: 13 Tales of Paranormal Love

Title: Kiss Me Deadly: 13 Tales of Paranormal Love

Edited by: Trisha Telep

Publisher: Running Press Teens 2010

Genre: YA paranormal

Pages: 430

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Support Your Local Library: Summer Romance - Paranormal

The usual cast of otherworldly suspects—ghosts, genies, demons, banshees, witches, and more—fills the pages of this collection, but these 13 stories of the paranormal come with a twist: all are love stories, of one sort or another. Not surprisingly, there is an air of the ominous about each, and (no spoiler here!) not all end happily. Though readable and entertaining, too many of the stories will probably be predictable to fans of this sort of fiction or are too long to pack much of a punch. Nevertheless, the best selections are wonderfully offbeat, inventive, and, well, haunting. Among these: Sarah Rees Brennan’s “The Spy Who Never Grew Up,” a wickedly funny and wonderfully written story about that eternal child Peter Pan, now grown to a teenager; Diana Peterfreund’s “Errant,” a deliciously dark tale of unlikely nuns and even more unlikely unicorns; and Maggie Stiefvater’s “The Hounds of Ulster,” an unforgettable story of music and love, rooted in Irish folklore. These three stories alone make the collection well worth reading. Grades 9-12. --Michael Cart

Awesomely beautiful collection of stories.  As mentioned above, not all end happily, but I find that I like those the best.  The ones with the ominous endings make much more sense to me in the paranormal world.

My favorites (so hard to pick, but I finally did):

1. "Lost" by Justine Mark -- Can you guess who the man in the white house is?  I certainly didn't until he said he's name.  Interesting take on a very old myth.
2. "Behind the Red Door" by Caitlin Kittredge -- A traditional style ghost story with a secret.  The house was like another character with moods and dreams and definitely nightmares.  Very creepy story.
3. "The Hounds of Ulster" by Maggie Stiefvater -- I love Irish mythology and this one plays off the old stories while placing it squarely in today's world.  Definitely not a happy ending, but a wonderfully crafted story of loss.

The other two mentioned in the summary paragraph above (Brennan and Peterfreund) were also amazing, but these three were my absolute favorite.  And each one of them ended on a note of despair.  Not that they didn't have an element of happiness in them.  It's just each story had such atmosphere, like a foggy day in the woods.  I loved them so much!  Curled up in my reading chair listening the Mumford and Sons channel on Pandora.  The perfect day.