Book Review: Ghost Summer by Tananarive Due

It’s incredibly clear from the outset that Tananarive Due is a masterful storyteller. Her stories exude heart, emotion, vulnerability and originality. She’ll be an auto-buy author for me from now on!

“You know everybody has a turn, and you just try to find something interesting every day to make you glad it hasn’t happened yet.”

The stories collected in Ghost Summer are scarily relevant with regards to current events. Not only do the themes of racism and the everyday struggles that Black people face feature in a number of the stories, but there’s also a selection of pandemic-related tales too.

As is the case with most short story collections, not every story was a hit for me, but I always expect that so it doesn’t lead to too much disappointment. Some of my favourites in this collection were:

- The Knowing, which is about a woman who knows when everyone she meets is going to die and her struggle in how to deal with having that kind of knowledge

- Like Daughter, which delves into the highly contentious topic of cloning

- Patient Zero, a fantastic account of the outbreak of a pandemic told through the diary entries of “patient zero”

- The title novella, Ghost Summer, which is a beautiful coming of age story about a town wherein only the children can see the ghosts that reside there

As always, I simply LOVE short story collections where each story has a little afterword from the writer. In particular, I loved the afterword from her husband, who is also a writer, it was incredibly sweet. I would thoroughly recommend picking this one up if you’re looking to add more Black horror voices to your shelves!

3.5/5. (As always with short story collections, I rate each story individually then work out the average for my final rating!)

Johann