Rachel Schommer Reviews: 9.22.25
- Rachel Schommer
- Sep 22
- 2 min read
Happy Fall, Y'all! Welcome to the best reading season of the year, hope you're ready to get spooky.
OLD FARMHOUSES OF THE NORTH by Michelle von Eschen
1. Holy frickin crap. I repeat, HOLY CRAP!!! This is only my 5th 5-star read for the whole year (and only the 3rd horror 5-star). When I finished, I could NOT stop thinking and talking about this one. Not only were the stories themselves excellent, but the whole set-up of the book absolutely blew my mind. This is a collection of 10 short stories, but instead of each story being completely unrelated, there’s an overarching plotline that in itself is almost an 11th story. When I came to the end, I just had to sit for a minute in the brilliance that was Old Farmhouses of the North.
2. I went into this one not realizing that it was a collection of short stories. Sometimes I like to just dive in for the surprise factor with no preconceived notions of what I’m getting myself into. The first story is the namesake of the collection and when it ended, I was so shocked and dismayed because I craved more. While this story doesn’t continue in the traditional way, I did get more so by the end of the book I was satisfied and completely flabbergasted at how utterly brilliant everything in this collection was.
3. This is a dark read filled with emotion and trauma. I love both extreme and splatterpunk, but this is far from that. This is all kinds of death written in a way that’s real and raw; it’s slow and full of feeling. I’d recommend checking content warnings on this one if you’re not in a spot to be confronted with certain traumatic losses.
Absolutely recommend!
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