A review by louturnspages
Mood Reader by Jiya Kaye, Luke Swanson, Zain Patton, Veronique Manfredini, Christina E. Patrick, Javier Garay, Amanda Fernandes, Sonya Lawson, Donna Taylor, A.M. Brown, Erica Jackson, Kata Čuić, Rethley Gil Chiru, Shanti Leonard, Persephone Jayne, Persephone Jayne, Monica Misho-Grems, Carmilla Voiez, Erin Slegaitis-Smith, Melanie S. Wolfe, Lynn Lipinski, M. Williams, B.A. McRae, Carrie Godfrey, April D. Berry, Lucas Barnes, Stephanie Houseal, Jocelyn Minton, Jeni Lee, Karen Ruhman, Kai Mathis, Monroe A. Wildrose, Melanie Forrest, Juniper Lea, Francis Alex Cooke, Elizabeth Wilsea, Nicole Zelniker

4.0

This was such a great read. So often, short story anthologies are centered around one main theme, but Jayne and the other authors wrote what they love for this one and then sorted them by genre, creating a true mood reader’s dream book.

There were so many great pieces in this book, and it would be such a fantastic read to have when you are just in the mood for a particular type of story—several of these pieces are even written in verse although there is not a poetry section! I don’t want to spend too much time describing the book itself because conceptually, it’s pretty straight forward, but I will say, I was hooked by this one from Jayne’s introduction where she describes how Mood Reader came to be, so rather than highlighting one section or author over another, I wanted to share a bit of that instead:

“Amidst the 2nd year of a global panini… I turned 42. Yes! That cosmic age where all the secrets of the Universe are revealed. I got this wild idea of producing an anthology of 42 stories, see what I did there? But the catch was I’d only accept works from my tiktok author family. Because, I had found my book family and they were amazing! I was off and running. I posted about my idea and started accepting submissions. Then someone pointed out that it might be hard to market a book with no clear genre linking us all together. Well, much how we fight the algorithm and don’t let TikTok niche us, I said, Universally speaking, you can’t pigeon hole me! So I leaned into it and our Genre Sampler Anthology fell into place as if we had planned it that way all along. Of course we had ;)”

Isn’t that insanely relatable? I am grateful for my bookstagram family every single day. I love how this book came to be, and I really enjoyed the sampling of so many writers—I definitely recommend this one!