REVIEW: “Akane is Dead” by Selphie Ke

Review of Selphie Ke, “Akane is Dead,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 21-24 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Pregnancy, death, femicide.

“The standard lie of the prostitute is ‘I love you’. The standard lie of the client is ‘I will marry you.’” It was a lesson writ on the hearts of every
Yoshiwara courtesan (p. 22).

This was a powerful story of sisterhood and vengeance, set in a setting I was almost entirely unfamiliar with, so I enjoyed my regular pauses to look up various words and references to learn more.

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REVIEW: “The Thing About the Castle” by David Hammond

Review of David Hammond, “The Thing About the Castle,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Oh, gosh, this was a beautiful and touching story. You think it’s going to be about Zack, the narrator, who builds Lego castles and makes up stories about them, but it turns out to really be a story about his mother, and father, and about love, and about loss. So many feelings stuffed into so short a story!

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REVIEW: “Practical Knitters” by Louise Hughes

Review of Louise Hughes, “Practical Knitters,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Anyone who has ever worked with yarn knows there’s more than a bit of magic in the craft. Hughes’s story is a warm fairy tale premised on making this point explicit. (But now I want the companion story about theoretical knitters — the ones who write the patterns that the practical knitters then knit!)

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REVIEW: “You Have Been Murdered” by Andrew Kozma

Review of Andrew Kozma, “You Have Been Murdered,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 29-31 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Murder (obvs), violence/blood.

I’m not normally a fan of 2nd-person stories, but this one really drew me in — not because it’s a story of how I was murdered, but because it’s a story about masking, about all the things people — whether murdered or maybe just merely neurodivergent — do to mask, to fit in (“you have been covering wonderfully”!). There was something about this story that felt like it was speaking directly to me; maybe that’s why, for once, the 2nd-person voice felt right. What a powerful story, one I’m unlikely to forget for a long time.

(First published in DIAGRAM Fall 2010.)

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REVIEW: “Janet and I Try to Get Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts at the Gilbert Rd Super Target. It’s the One in Scottsdale. No, the Other One. The One on Gilbert” by Saul Lemerond

Review of Saul Lemerond, “Janet and I Try to Get Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts at the Gilbert Rd Super Target. It’s the One in Scottsdale. No, the Other One. The One on Gilbert,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 12-15 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When I skimmed the table of contents of this issue of FFO, I knew immediately I had to read this story first. The title alone is practically a story in itself!

And I wasn’t disappointed: This was a perfectly packaged little gem, making me smile and laugh the whole way through, right up until the sucker punch ending. Relationships, whether natural or supernatural, are never easy, and often heart-breaking.

(First published in Electric Spec 16, no. 3, August 2021).

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REVIEW: “Through These Moments, Darkly” by Samantha Murray

Review of Samantha Murray, “Through These Moments, Darkly”, Clarkesworld Issue 223, April (2025): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

Reading this story on a cold spring day hits different. The “you” point of view for narration was a choice, and I’m happy to say it made sense for the story. Lovely words throughout – the prose was just as awesome as the plot. An evocative piece of writing.

This story is a hopeful delight.

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REVIEW: “The Chaperone” by Kimberly Crow

Review of Kimberly Crow, “The Chaperone,” Flash Fiction Online 138 (March 2025): 22-23 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Infertility.

FFO occasionally serves up a story that has no speculative element, which is what this one is. It is nevertheless a thoughtful, poignant story that gets right at the heart of what it is like to long for a child you may never have.

(First published in WOW! Women On Writing, May 2024.)

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REVIEW: “Borrowed Breath and Starlit Scales” by Erin L. Swann

Review of Erin L. Swann, “Borrowed Breath and Starlit Scales,” Flash Fiction Online 138 (March 2025): 29-30 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

If you like stories of monstrous mermaids luring sailors into the depths, you’ll enjoy this. For me, I kept expecting more to happen — in a two-page story, specifics matter all the more, because there just isn’t enough time for generalities.

(First published in Factor Four October 2022).

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REVIEW: “Drown-Haunted” by Corey Farrenkopf

Review of Corey Farrenkopf, “Drown-Haunted,” Flash Fiction Online 138 (March 2025): 25-28 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death of a parent.

This story was eerily reminiscent of another I recently reviewed, “The Ferryman Makes His Morning Crossing” by Corey Davis (the eeriness only enhanced by the fact that the two authors share a given name!). There’s something very real and present in the fear that both of these stories express: Fear of a future where our lives and cities as we know them have been overtaken by rising tides, endlessly submerged. But Farrenkopf’s has a moment of hope, towards the end.

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