A review by honnari_hannya
Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap

3.0

An ultimately "good but not great" collection of short stories. I enjoyed the inclusion of a folk mythology that isn’t Western or East Asian, since I do find that publishing has largely written off those cultures as not very appealing or commercial. But sometimes it is stylistically lackluster—the stories are pretty straightforward, and some hold your hand through the metaphor of the monster as a symbol for the social outcast. The stories I enjoyed best are the ones that had no monsters at all, since it didn't feel like Yap was hammering in the metaphor too hard there; particularly the one about the veggies and fruit that grow on the houses as a one-a-year miracle.