REVIEW: “Sour Milk” by Phoenix Mendoza

Review of Phoenix Mendoza, “Sour Milk,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 30-32 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: body horror; child neglect; femicide

That this is going to be a gruesome story is made obvious right from the start — there’s dead bodies right away in paragraph two. Jean-Marie likes to talk to these women, swollen and maggoty and slick with decomposition, because she has no mother of her own, no one else to talk to. And because this is a horror story, of course the Ladies talk back — they need her just as much as she needs them.

This is definitely not going to be a story for everyone, but if you like horror, it’s deftly crafted.

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REVIEW: “Yes, No, Goodbye” by LeeAnn Perry

Review of LeeAnn Perry, “Yes, No, Goodbye,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 26-28 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Suicidal ideation.

I’m never quite sure what to make of stories like this. It’s a ghost story, well-crafted and constructed, put together in a way that leads to a simple resolution and leaves few questions unanswered. But along the way it concentrates on the sad and the sordid and the unhappy, and whenever I read a story like this, I always wonder — what does the author expect me to get out of a story like this? I think sometimes I wish for a little more escapism from my reading than gritty realism stories like this provide.

(First published in The Dawn Review August 2023.)

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REVIEW: “Transubstantiation” by Sam W. Pisciotta

Review of Sam W. Pisciotta, “Transubstantiation,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 23-25 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There’s something about the glorification of motherhood (the whole “becoming a mother makes you a goddess” trope) in this story that doesn’t sit well at all with me. The emphasis on the transcendence of the mother also diminishes the role of the father, and while the resolution of the story comes as the father finds a way to restore his rightful place in the family, it’s a resolution to a problem that I wish hadn’t been there in the first place.

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REVIEW: “To Be a Woman is To Be Without a Name” by Chidera Solomon Anikpe

Review of Chidera Solomon Anikpe, “To Be a Woman is To Be Without a Name,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 19-22 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When FFO serves up one of its rare non-speculative stories, I’m never quite sure what to say. I include the stories on this blog because our commitment to reviewing all stories in a given issue or anthology trumps our focus on speculative fiction; but I sort of feel like I’m not sure what I’m supposed to get out of a non-spec fic short story, so I don’t know how to read it properly.

What I can say is that this somewhat-autobiographical-feeling story has a stark, strong conclusion.

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REVIEW: “Eight Legs of the Mother Hunted” by Brandon Case

Review of Brandon Case, “Eight Legs of the Mother Hunted,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 15-18 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Spiders (obvs); death of a child.

I love it when a story can get me to empathise with something that normally gives me the ick — it’s the mark of a quality writer when that happens. I’m not a huge fan of spiders, but I am 100% on the side of the titular mother hunted. Her pain is my pain, and her victory my victory. What a gorgeous little story.

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REVIEW: “Entropy in a Fruit Bowl” by Nicole Lynn

Review of Nicole Lynn, “Entropy in a Fruit Bowl,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death of a parent, physical violence.

Apparently the trick to learning necromancy is: Start small. But love that only existed asymmetrically can never be resurrected once it is dead — these are the two lessons of this short, exceedingly sad, story.

(First published in The Arcanist October 2022.)

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REVIEW: “Robot, Changeling, Ghost” by Avra Margariti

Review of Avra Margariti, “Robot, Changeling, Ghost,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 7-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death of a child; child abuse.

I’m always excited when I see an Avra Margariti byline, as I know I’m in for something satisfying and probably unusual. This story is particularly dark, bordering on horror, full of hurt and loss and longing. It’s also disconcerting enough that I’d like to say: Read with care.

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REVIEW: “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Teleporter” by M. J. Pettit

Review of M. J. Pettit, “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Teleporter,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 25-28 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I wanted to love this story — great title, a lot of humor, intriguing premise, a captivating hook at the beginning — but unfortunately, I just couldn’t quite. The combination of the 2nd person POV plus story-telling that presupposes I (as the “you” character in the story) know far more about what’s going on than I (as the reader!) actually do made it feel like I as a reader was being kept at arm’s length, making it hard for me to properly engage with the story.

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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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