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: “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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REVIEW: “Lizzie Williams’ Swampy Head” by Joshua Jones Lofflin

Review of Joshua Jones Lofflin, “Lizzie Williams’ Swampy Head,” Flash Fiction Online 138 (March 2025): 14-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I often find short stories told in the voice of a child annoying, because far too often that voice feels cloying and fake. Not so at all with Lofflin’s story, which had all the sorcery inherent in a passel of young girls — he nails it.

(First published in MetaStellar May 2021.)

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REVIEW: “Henrietta Armitage Doesn’t Read Anymore” by Damon Young

Review of Damon Young, “Henrietta Armitage Doesn’t Read Anymore,” Flash Fiction Online 138 (March 2025): 9-13 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: suicidal ideation.

In this compelling story, Young takes a metaphor and pushes it to the extreme. While Henrietta tells her doctor, “You can’t get sick from a metaphor,” Young manages to construct a believable story where this statement itself becomes no longer all that believable.

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