Title: 51 Sleepless Nights: Thriller short stories collection about Demons, Undead, Paranormal, Psychopath’s, Ghosts, Aliens and Mystery

Author: Tobias Wade

Publisher: Unknown

Date of publication: June 18th, 2017

Genre: Horror, short stories, paranormal

Number of pages: 358

POV: 1st person

Where you can buy 51 Sleepless Nights: Amazon

Book synopsis (from Goodreads):

Horror/Thriller Stories Collection 
A diverse collection of short horror stories including the grizzly confessions of a serial killer, parallel dimensions, becoming trapped in a virtual world and encountering ancient aliens buried beneath the Earth’s crust. Demons, monsters, psychopaths, undead, mad experiments and paranormal – no matter what makes your heart race, you’re guaranteed to face your fear with these terrifying tales. 

Excerpt: 
I felt her arms around me, but she wasn’t trying to choke me or restrain me. She was… hugging me. It was such an alien sensation that I immediately opened my eyes. That’s when I saw them. Hundreds – no thousands of gossamer spider webs holding up her body like a marionette doll. I recoiled immediately, and she let me without the slightest resistance. 

The spiders were everywhere. Crawling across her face, through her hair. When she opened her mouth, I saw more of them inside her, pulling the threads to work her jaw. Her throat pulsed, and I knew more must be further down to vibrate her vocal chords. 

“But he’s never going to hurt you again. You have our word.” 

I was too shocked to fully understand what was happening. The alarm in my mind wouldn’t stop, and I still felt like I was about to pay for my rebellion. I didn’t want to stare, but couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to go and see, but my feet carried me there anyway. 

I opened Jeff’s room and found him on his bed. His hands and feet were bound with countless loops of spiderweb. More of it was across his face, tying his tongue securely to the roof of his mouth. His skin was perforated with a thousand holes, and spiders were crawling in and out of them as they carefully partitioned and wrapped each piece for consumption. His eyes blinked at me, although I don’t know if that was a sign of life or simply the successful attachment of yet another internal strand. I quietly closed the door and let them finish their work. 
-My Mother the Spider Queen

Trigger Warning: None

My review:

I am a huge fan of horror books. Unfortunately, I don’t review that genre because I have found that I get bored with most books. See, I was raised on Stephen King. I was reading It at 10 and The Stand at 12. It is safe to say that I hold every single horror book that I have read up to his works. Most will poo-poo me, come at me and say “Well, so and so is better“. For this girl, it’s Stephen King. I have read authors that have come close to meeting my high expectation of what horror should be. Unfortunately, most have not like I stated earlier in this paragraph. So, when Tobias Wade approached me to read and review 51 Nights, I accepted. I will admit I didn’t have high expectations.

I was wrong. This short story collection blew me out of the water. From the first story, Vicarious, I was hooked. I usually read at night, my only real free time, but I found myself picking up my Kindle during the day. I was reading while playing WoW, cooking and I even took it to my kids’ swimming lessons one day. What should have taken me 2-3 days to read, took me 1 1/2. The book was that good.

I had mentioned above that I usually read at night. Well, 51 Nights made such an impression that I was dreaming about the stories. Not good dreams either But that is the point of a horror book in my eyes. If an author can make the horror come back at you during the night or seeing certain items, then they did a great job. But if they fail to make you think about the stories outside of the book, then it is a fail. 51 Nights, for me, definitely is the first group.

I did have my favorite stories in the book. They were:

My Mother the Spider Queen. Let’s say that I will never squish or be mean to a spider again.

124 Terabyte Virus. I will not look at computer viruses the same again. I also will not ever take a bath again…lol.

How to Start your own Cult. This was creepy from beginning to the end and it was scary how one person can influence others.

Dead Man Floating. Um, yeah. Not only was the OP creepy but slugs? Gross.

My Summary of 51 Night: 5 stars

51 Nights is a bone chilling, spine tingling read. Each short story is horror personified and I loved it. I will recommend not reading at night or if you are easily frightened because this book will frighten you.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Adult

Why: Language and violence

I would like to thank Tobias Wade for allowing me to review 51 Nights.

All opinions expressed in this review are mine.

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**