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Hellions: Stories
“Every sentence drips and unsettles, every character lusts and schemes, every landscape is alien and forbidding. . . . I am obsessed with these lush, feral stories.”—Carmen Maria Machado
“Beautiful, visceral, surprising stories, both wild and dangerous, with a Southern twang but universal appeal. Elliott is an Angela Carter for our times.”—Jeff VanderMeer
From the acclaimed author of The Wilds comes an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal.
In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods. With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, presenting earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.
“Beautiful, visceral, surprising stories, both wild and dangerous, with a Southern twang but universal appeal. Elliott is an Angela Carter for our times.”—Jeff VanderMeer
From the acclaimed author of The Wilds comes an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal.
In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods. With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, presenting earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.
272 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2025
91 people are currently reading
7089 people want to read
About the author
Julia Elliott
10 books146 followersJulia Elliott’s fiction has appeared in Tin House, the Georgia Review, Conjunctions, Fence, Best American Fantasy, and other publications. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. Her debut story collection, The Wilds, was chosen by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Buzzfeed, and Book Riot as one of the Best Books of 2014 and was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. She is currently working on a novel about hamadryas baboons, a species she has studied as an amateur primatologist. She teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where she lives with her daughter and husband. She and her spouse, John Dennis, are founding members of the music collective Grey Egg.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
April 15, 2025
When I was seven years old, my parents moved us across the San Francisco Bay from one suburb to another, both bathed in the omnipresent shadow of the burgeoning influence of Silicon Valley. For one glorious year, we lived on a street surrounded by families in neighbouring houses stuffed to the gills with kids around my age. For one glorious summer, I spent every hour that the California sun was awake and often several hours after it went to sleep immersed in the sort of rapture that comes with being a kid surrounded by other kids that had all been jettisoned from their homes for the day and told to “get some fresh air”.
I climbed my first tree that summer, a stately walnut tree that graced the edge of the property, and subsequently had my first fall from that same tree, requiring a handful of stitches and gifting me a little notch of a scar that I can still find on my face if I look close enough. That was the summer that I learned my first swear words from a kid that was two years older than me and then learned what happens when you exclaim, “SHIT!” in front of your aunt and uncle soon after. I rode a black BMX bike hampered with training wheels up and down the street to the various homes of friends and ended up being chased by a gang of high school kids on their own bikes as they screamed, “we’ll get you next time!” after taking flight down the length of our street, panicking and leaping off of my bike to vault over the white wooden fence that lined our front yard.
No matter how long ago that was, I can still feel that alternating sense of burning fear and cold sweat as I sensed them on my heels, chasing me up the street. I can still feel the relief that I experienced when I barrelled through the front door to my house and heard my mom’s voice as she talked to a friend on the phone. I can still feel the tang of the chlorine in my nostrils from the pool that we had in the backyard as I walked through the house and launched myself straight into the pool, still wearing all of my clothes, letting the cool water strip away the stress, the sweat, the heat. But the feeling of panic, the thrill of the fear, i can still feel those prodding at a part of my brain that will never disappear and will never die.
As I read through the eleven stories that make up Julia Elliott’s new collection, Hellions, I felt that surge of memory, that flicker of nostalgia, that pinprick of dread come swarming back into my blood and felt myself looking over my shoulder to see if I was yet again being chased by that small army of boys on their bikes. It’s not enough to say that you had the chance to read one of Julia’s stories, that word - “read” - it doesn’t do enough to define what your mind and your body go through as you take each of her stories in. Her ability to pull you into a scene with just a few sentences and introduce you to a new cast of characters all with fresh perspectives amidst unfamiliar surroundings and allow you to feel as if you’ve lived with these characters and their experiences for a good chunk of your life is masterful. I hesitate to say that you experience her stories rather than read them because even that doesn’t feel like enough. You inhale, you start the first line and then you don’t exhale until the final period marks the end of the story. You live it, it sustains you.
It’s extremely fitting that when you pick up a copy of Hellions, it’s cover is graced with quotes from two legends - Carmen Maria Machado and Jeff VanderMeer - extolling the pleasures of the stories contained within its pages. Both writers are well-known for their deft ability to pull you deep into the chaos of their own stories and surround you with an abundance of imagery that pushes your imagination and fascination to the limits. Hellions is deliciously lush in it’s own right with intense, biting and snarling descriptions of the sweat and sting of the sweet and rotten summer air, the sludge at the banks of ponds and the chittering of insects and the stink of bogs and swamps, the ache of love, of loss, of needing more. Julia clearly delights in playing with language and all of it’s mighty potential and gives a voice to a way of looking at things that usually only nags at the corners of most people’s minds, unable to find purchase and lost to time.
Throughout Hellions, childhood and all of it’s blissful wonder and naughty escapism run rampant. Even in the few stories that don’t feature children directly, it’s presence is felt to extreme degrees - both as defiance to the idea of growing up and maturing and as an ode to the sheer capabilities of an imagination allowed to flourish. The characters that traverse through each of the stories seem to transcend time and place despite it being remarkably clear when and where these stories are occurring without even a single breath given to the when or the where. They appear to exist in a liminal space in time where the past, present and future collide and allow for reality to break from it’s strict rules and standards, creating a universe unto itself.
If anything, Hellions feels like a flex of the range and abilities of it’s author, both in it’s playfulness with genre-hopping and in the way that similar elements inhabit each of the stories, giving them the feeling of being intrinsically diverse and ever-connected in spirit. Split-level houses, the struggle that comes with being forced to grow up, the pain of being virtually ignored by parents that are at constantly at odds with each other, the onslaught of love, the overwhelming presence of nature, mysticism and mythology, the cleansing power of water - all are central to so much of what lies at the heart of Hellions as words and sentences are turned into a living organism that you can almost taste, almost smell and will undoubtedly reach out to and attempt to touch.
We are barely a quarter of the way into 2025 and I have already had the pleasure to read four new collections of short stories that have left me winded, gutted and thrilled for what’s occurring right now in the world of short fiction. Hellions is the first of this batch to be released and it might just be my favourite.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Tin House for allowing me to read an advanced copy of a book that I will be re-reading at least once a year.
I climbed my first tree that summer, a stately walnut tree that graced the edge of the property, and subsequently had my first fall from that same tree, requiring a handful of stitches and gifting me a little notch of a scar that I can still find on my face if I look close enough. That was the summer that I learned my first swear words from a kid that was two years older than me and then learned what happens when you exclaim, “SHIT!” in front of your aunt and uncle soon after. I rode a black BMX bike hampered with training wheels up and down the street to the various homes of friends and ended up being chased by a gang of high school kids on their own bikes as they screamed, “we’ll get you next time!” after taking flight down the length of our street, panicking and leaping off of my bike to vault over the white wooden fence that lined our front yard.
No matter how long ago that was, I can still feel that alternating sense of burning fear and cold sweat as I sensed them on my heels, chasing me up the street. I can still feel the relief that I experienced when I barrelled through the front door to my house and heard my mom’s voice as she talked to a friend on the phone. I can still feel the tang of the chlorine in my nostrils from the pool that we had in the backyard as I walked through the house and launched myself straight into the pool, still wearing all of my clothes, letting the cool water strip away the stress, the sweat, the heat. But the feeling of panic, the thrill of the fear, i can still feel those prodding at a part of my brain that will never disappear and will never die.
As I read through the eleven stories that make up Julia Elliott’s new collection, Hellions, I felt that surge of memory, that flicker of nostalgia, that pinprick of dread come swarming back into my blood and felt myself looking over my shoulder to see if I was yet again being chased by that small army of boys on their bikes. It’s not enough to say that you had the chance to read one of Julia’s stories, that word - “read” - it doesn’t do enough to define what your mind and your body go through as you take each of her stories in. Her ability to pull you into a scene with just a few sentences and introduce you to a new cast of characters all with fresh perspectives amidst unfamiliar surroundings and allow you to feel as if you’ve lived with these characters and their experiences for a good chunk of your life is masterful. I hesitate to say that you experience her stories rather than read them because even that doesn’t feel like enough. You inhale, you start the first line and then you don’t exhale until the final period marks the end of the story. You live it, it sustains you.
It’s extremely fitting that when you pick up a copy of Hellions, it’s cover is graced with quotes from two legends - Carmen Maria Machado and Jeff VanderMeer - extolling the pleasures of the stories contained within its pages. Both writers are well-known for their deft ability to pull you deep into the chaos of their own stories and surround you with an abundance of imagery that pushes your imagination and fascination to the limits. Hellions is deliciously lush in it’s own right with intense, biting and snarling descriptions of the sweat and sting of the sweet and rotten summer air, the sludge at the banks of ponds and the chittering of insects and the stink of bogs and swamps, the ache of love, of loss, of needing more. Julia clearly delights in playing with language and all of it’s mighty potential and gives a voice to a way of looking at things that usually only nags at the corners of most people’s minds, unable to find purchase and lost to time.
Throughout Hellions, childhood and all of it’s blissful wonder and naughty escapism run rampant. Even in the few stories that don’t feature children directly, it’s presence is felt to extreme degrees - both as defiance to the idea of growing up and maturing and as an ode to the sheer capabilities of an imagination allowed to flourish. The characters that traverse through each of the stories seem to transcend time and place despite it being remarkably clear when and where these stories are occurring without even a single breath given to the when or the where. They appear to exist in a liminal space in time where the past, present and future collide and allow for reality to break from it’s strict rules and standards, creating a universe unto itself.
If anything, Hellions feels like a flex of the range and abilities of it’s author, both in it’s playfulness with genre-hopping and in the way that similar elements inhabit each of the stories, giving them the feeling of being intrinsically diverse and ever-connected in spirit. Split-level houses, the struggle that comes with being forced to grow up, the pain of being virtually ignored by parents that are at constantly at odds with each other, the onslaught of love, the overwhelming presence of nature, mysticism and mythology, the cleansing power of water - all are central to so much of what lies at the heart of Hellions as words and sentences are turned into a living organism that you can almost taste, almost smell and will undoubtedly reach out to and attempt to touch.
We are barely a quarter of the way into 2025 and I have already had the pleasure to read four new collections of short stories that have left me winded, gutted and thrilled for what’s occurring right now in the world of short fiction. Hellions is the first of this batch to be released and it might just be my favourite.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Tin House for allowing me to read an advanced copy of a book that I will be re-reading at least once a year.
May 4, 2025
When Jeff VanderMeer and Carmen Maria Machado are raving about a book, you KNOW it’s going to be a good read. So I was not surprised that I had such a fantastic time reading this one.
This is a collection of often chilling speculative literary stories, many of them set in the U.S. South. Throughout them, there is a sense of confrontation with the unknown. The standout story for me depicts women who are staying at a retreat for female artists and their children, when suddenly two extra kids appear out of nowhere. There’s this moment when the main character is counting all of the kids, who are wearing masks, and realizes there are strangers among the group. As the story unfurls, there’s palpable tension as we wonder whether these innocent-looking children can be trusted. This feeling of not knowing is pretty much guaranteed to draw me into a story, and the must-read sensation is only heightened by the gorgeous prose.
I’m not from the Southern U.S., but I suspect this collection will resonate extra hard with those who are, as the setting plays such a crucial role in many of these stories.
If you, like me, love books that hit that sweet spot between horror and lit fic, you’ll enjoy this collection!
Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy.
This is a collection of often chilling speculative literary stories, many of them set in the U.S. South. Throughout them, there is a sense of confrontation with the unknown. The standout story for me depicts women who are staying at a retreat for female artists and their children, when suddenly two extra kids appear out of nowhere. There’s this moment when the main character is counting all of the kids, who are wearing masks, and realizes there are strangers among the group. As the story unfurls, there’s palpable tension as we wonder whether these innocent-looking children can be trusted. This feeling of not knowing is pretty much guaranteed to draw me into a story, and the must-read sensation is only heightened by the gorgeous prose.
I’m not from the Southern U.S., but I suspect this collection will resonate extra hard with those who are, as the setting plays such a crucial role in many of these stories.
If you, like me, love books that hit that sweet spot between horror and lit fic, you’ll enjoy this collection!
Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy.
April 19, 2025
"While half of the stories in Hellions explore the uncanniness of feral girlhoods, the others revolve around the archetype of “the witch”—liminal women who lurk along the border between the real and unreal."-- Julia Elliott
"lush Southern Gothic prose, unruly characters, clever science fiction concepts, strange monsters—with a general sense of wildness and adventure on every page."--Lincoln Michel
I loved this short story collection! Big review coming for The LinUp soon
"lush Southern Gothic prose, unruly characters, clever science fiction concepts, strange monsters—with a general sense of wildness and adventure on every page."--Lincoln Michel
I loved this short story collection! Big review coming for The LinUp soon
December 19, 2025
Finished it a couple of days ago and still thinking about it! I decided to give this collection of eleven stories a strong 4 stars. The stories are horror, fairy tales, magic realism, and, overall, just plain bizarre and eerie. And, above all, there's Julia Elliott's beautiful prose.
The story that sticks with me the most is "The Mothers." It involves a pair of mysterious orphans who come out of the mountains ( in North Carolina) and seem to exert some kind of influence over the children of women who are at an art colony...There's something about mysterious children...
I had to take breaks from reading the stories, as they were beginning to blur together. I like to read horror now and then but not as my regular reading. I feel this book has given me enough horror to last me for for awhile but I have to admit these stories are more eerie and surreal rather than horror ( horrorific?).
The story that sticks with me the most is "The Mothers." It involves a pair of mysterious orphans who come out of the mountains ( in North Carolina) and seem to exert some kind of influence over the children of women who are at an art colony...There's something about mysterious children...
I had to take breaks from reading the stories, as they were beginning to blur together. I like to read horror now and then but not as my regular reading. I feel this book has given me enough horror to last me for for awhile but I have to admit these stories are more eerie and surreal rather than horror ( horrorific?).
June 17, 2025
I really liked Julia Elliott's first collection The Wilds, also from Tin House. After 10 years, we finally have another volume!
The first couple stories were solid but perhaps not outstanding. Elliott reworks (for her) familiar territory: young women in messy, unsettling situations, somehow dealing with vaguely supernatural threats or challenging realities, often with dark fairy tale elements. Then a bunch of memorable gems: "The Erl King"'s tongue-in-cheek interweaving of messy magicks, messy sex, and messy academic politics; the jaundiced fairy tale of "Flying"; maternal drug-use and delirium of "The Mothers"; "Moon Witch, Moon Witch"'s hilarious alternation of corporate reality and VR dating; another disturbing fairy tale in "The Gricklemare".
Elliott's writing is always strong and cliche-free, such a pleasure to chew over. I love her charming and flawed characters, grappling for a little control in their ugly situations (as we also try to in our increasingly ugly ones).
I have to single out "Another Frequency". Like H.G. Wells' "The Door in the Wall", the protagonist repeatedly encounters an uncanny artifact (a mysterious radio station that plays weird and wonderful music); the artifact draws her into magical but ultimately troubling experiences. The story practically has my name written on it: the playlists in the story is peppered with items from my collection (Klaus Nomi! Aksak Maboul! Schnittke! Lindsay Cooper! Delia Derbyshire! etc). I tend not to enjoy extended dialog, but Elliott writes clever exchanges:
More notes:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
The first couple stories were solid but perhaps not outstanding. Elliott reworks (for her) familiar territory: young women in messy, unsettling situations, somehow dealing with vaguely supernatural threats or challenging realities, often with dark fairy tale elements. Then a bunch of memorable gems: "The Erl King"'s tongue-in-cheek interweaving of messy magicks, messy sex, and messy academic politics; the jaundiced fairy tale of "Flying"; maternal drug-use and delirium of "The Mothers"; "Moon Witch, Moon Witch"'s hilarious alternation of corporate reality and VR dating; another disturbing fairy tale in "The Gricklemare".
Elliott's writing is always strong and cliche-free, such a pleasure to chew over. I love her charming and flawed characters, grappling for a little control in their ugly situations (as we also try to in our increasingly ugly ones).
I have to single out "Another Frequency". Like H.G. Wells' "The Door in the Wall", the protagonist repeatedly encounters an uncanny artifact (a mysterious radio station that plays weird and wonderful music); the artifact draws her into magical but ultimately troubling experiences. The story practically has my name written on it: the playlists in the story is peppered with items from my collection (Klaus Nomi! Aksak Maboul! Schnittke! Lindsay Cooper! Delia Derbyshire! etc). I tend not to enjoy extended dialog, but Elliott writes clever exchanges:
[Viv is the protagonist, Josh is her son, Stella is Viv's partner]
"We couldn't start without you, Mutter," said Josh.
"You're wet," Stella observed dryly.
"The weather is weird," said Viv.
"Mother Earth is doomed," said Josh. "But have some wine."
He poured her a glass of merlot.
"Don't be nihilistic," said Stella.
"More Buddhist, actually," said Josh. "Accepting impermanence."
More notes:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
January 25, 2025
Many thanks to Tin House for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Every story in Hellions is captivating, unsettling, and mystical. These atmospheric tales mainly take place in the southern America and tend to follow various fascinating female characters. The whimsigoth vibes just pour out of this collection.
My favorite story has to be Arcadia Lakes, where a young girl discovers a mysterious creature in an algae-filled, drying lake. I also really enjoyed Bride, which follows a devout nun as her convent is struck by the plague. Although I've only mentioned two of the eleven stories, each one has a uniqueness to it that's difficult to explain. I highly recommend these stories to anyone looking for something fantastical, uncanny, and strange.
Every story in Hellions is captivating, unsettling, and mystical. These atmospheric tales mainly take place in the southern America and tend to follow various fascinating female characters. The whimsigoth vibes just pour out of this collection.
My favorite story has to be Arcadia Lakes, where a young girl discovers a mysterious creature in an algae-filled, drying lake. I also really enjoyed Bride, which follows a devout nun as her convent is struck by the plague. Although I've only mentioned two of the eleven stories, each one has a uniqueness to it that's difficult to explain. I highly recommend these stories to anyone looking for something fantastical, uncanny, and strange.
Read
August 14, 2025delightfully, the angela carter comparison holds up for once (invocations, like invocations of t-pynch, tending to be spurious if not straight-up fraudulent). re prose, the "lush" descriptor is spot on, both in the "can't eat more than a few bites of this chocolate cake" sense & the "area behind the train tracks that's never been weed-whacked and looks like a dang jungle" sense. main issue is that every story seems to end in the same spielberg mode w/ chars looking up in awe at sth ineffable. "the mothers" in particular seemed to wanna be a rachel ingalls style horror story but reverts to spielberg. bring some of the same sweltering wildness seen elsewhere to closing grafs & we'd really be cooking w/ gas here
May 9, 2025
4.5 stars.
Reading these stories feels like the literary equivalent of cracking open a perfectly ripe pomegranate with your bare hands and messily scooping handfuls of the succulent sweet seeds into your mouth, flavor bursting on your tongue with each bite, until you’re left sticky-fingered and satiated, ruby-red juice droplets staining your lips and chin like blood.
I was truly blown away by this collection, particularly with Elliott’s luxurious and visceral prose. Everything she writes feels incredibly lush and pungent, squirming with life on the page.
“She chastises the filthy maggot of her carnality until she feels fire crackling up her backbone”
“Clouds of flies hovered…creating an atmosphere in which we seemed trapped, a cursed miasma of our own making, composed of our breath and gastrointestinal emanations, the stench of fried fish and unkempt dogs, plus the cigarette smoke that perpetually flowed from the moist charred tissue of Dad’s lungs”
Although each story varies in setting/plot/characters, there’s a strong, underlying theme woven throughout that unifies each piece: a bone deep, primal longing towards a natural existence; one in which humans live simply and organically, coexisting peacefully amongst fern and fauna as just another mammal in the animal kingdom; a “mournful collective wail”; a lament for something sacred, pure and wild.
It isn’t just sadness, though. I think what really qualifies these stories as “horror” is that underneath the lamentation is a pulsating anger - a rabid hunger for dismantlement and reclamation; a rage with roots, thick and snarling, running deep enough to penetrate the earth’s very core - volcanic and feral, simmering below the starved and shriveling surface of soil we’ve so carelessly pillaged and poisoned. There is an ominous feeling of dereliction and neglect haunting these pages, leaving the putrid stench of rot in its wake.
Brimming with rich descriptions of wildlife and vegetation, lush soil, wet leaves, organic musks, soft pelts, herbs and wine and blood and fire…Elliot doesn’t shy away from the horrors that accompany the beauty of organic matter; mold and maggots, gristle and sinew, piss, shit, filth and decay. Hellions explores the the divine mysteries of nature while also exposing the ugly underbelly of its wrath; evidence of magic both light and dark, but always wild.
Reading these stories feels like the literary equivalent of cracking open a perfectly ripe pomegranate with your bare hands and messily scooping handfuls of the succulent sweet seeds into your mouth, flavor bursting on your tongue with each bite, until you’re left sticky-fingered and satiated, ruby-red juice droplets staining your lips and chin like blood.
I was truly blown away by this collection, particularly with Elliott’s luxurious and visceral prose. Everything she writes feels incredibly lush and pungent, squirming with life on the page.
“She chastises the filthy maggot of her carnality until she feels fire crackling up her backbone”
“Clouds of flies hovered…creating an atmosphere in which we seemed trapped, a cursed miasma of our own making, composed of our breath and gastrointestinal emanations, the stench of fried fish and unkempt dogs, plus the cigarette smoke that perpetually flowed from the moist charred tissue of Dad’s lungs”
Although each story varies in setting/plot/characters, there’s a strong, underlying theme woven throughout that unifies each piece: a bone deep, primal longing towards a natural existence; one in which humans live simply and organically, coexisting peacefully amongst fern and fauna as just another mammal in the animal kingdom; a “mournful collective wail”; a lament for something sacred, pure and wild.
It isn’t just sadness, though. I think what really qualifies these stories as “horror” is that underneath the lamentation is a pulsating anger - a rabid hunger for dismantlement and reclamation; a rage with roots, thick and snarling, running deep enough to penetrate the earth’s very core - volcanic and feral, simmering below the starved and shriveling surface of soil we’ve so carelessly pillaged and poisoned. There is an ominous feeling of dereliction and neglect haunting these pages, leaving the putrid stench of rot in its wake.
Brimming with rich descriptions of wildlife and vegetation, lush soil, wet leaves, organic musks, soft pelts, herbs and wine and blood and fire…Elliot doesn’t shy away from the horrors that accompany the beauty of organic matter; mold and maggots, gristle and sinew, piss, shit, filth and decay. Hellions explores the the divine mysteries of nature while also exposing the ugly underbelly of its wrath; evidence of magic both light and dark, but always wild.
July 2, 2025
My only wish is that some stories were longer!!!! Gricklemare, Gricklemare!
Read
May 18, 2025strange.. i liked a couple of the stories but unsure how i felt about this overall.
July 14, 2025
“Little shits,” she hisses.
May 24, 2025
really excellent short stories that range from Angela Carter-esque riffs on feminist fantasy to speculative fiction with sci-fi dystopias. all are set in the heady, loamy, humid backdrop of the South - you can feel sweat prickling on your spine as you read. the characters are trapped in a slow-boiling heat as they navigate alienation and climate change, anxiety about which permeate every story even when not named explicitly. childhood and the uncanniness of kids run through most of the stories as well. a fantastic collection and an author I'm newly enthused about.
January 16, 2025
ARC Review
Thank you to Tin House Books for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Hellions by Julia Elliott is a collection of short stories that, while not strict in their theming, contain elements of the supernatural and sublime. The stories, often set in the American south, are highly atmospheric and often times create imagery that is both incredibly vivid and incredibly grotesque at the same time.
The stories are very high brow, in both their intelligent references and theming. For readers with a love for brief, challenging, but ultimately worthwhile short stories, the collection is a wonderful choice. I would caution that readers who don’t enjoy works that don’t have concrete plot arcs or finite explanations. Part of the allure of this book is the somewhat mysterious ambiguity that defines many of the stories. It is often impossible to discern whether a character is in reality or dreaming, and whether creatures are real or imagined.
As with all collections of short stories or essays, not all of them are going to land as successfully as the others. However, Elliott’s works display a high level of consistency across selections. Personally, I found that the most compelling story was ‘Gricklemare,’ but I did particularly enjoy ‘Another Frequency’ as well.
One of my favorite things that Elliott does throughout Hellions is describe the wild, at times feral, highly magical time of girlhood. Whether her young, female characters are raising alligators, riding shoeless on mini bikes, imagining fantastical worlds on other planets, or obsessing over demons, they defy the conventions of traditional imagery. These young girls and teens have deep connections to the natural and the supernatural and are hellions as much as any of the boys depicted in the book.
I found this to be a somewhat challenging read at times. It was nevertheless enjoyable and unusual. 4/5 stars!
Thank you to Tin House Books for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Hellions by Julia Elliott is a collection of short stories that, while not strict in their theming, contain elements of the supernatural and sublime. The stories, often set in the American south, are highly atmospheric and often times create imagery that is both incredibly vivid and incredibly grotesque at the same time.
The stories are very high brow, in both their intelligent references and theming. For readers with a love for brief, challenging, but ultimately worthwhile short stories, the collection is a wonderful choice. I would caution that readers who don’t enjoy works that don’t have concrete plot arcs or finite explanations. Part of the allure of this book is the somewhat mysterious ambiguity that defines many of the stories. It is often impossible to discern whether a character is in reality or dreaming, and whether creatures are real or imagined.
As with all collections of short stories or essays, not all of them are going to land as successfully as the others. However, Elliott’s works display a high level of consistency across selections. Personally, I found that the most compelling story was ‘Gricklemare,’ but I did particularly enjoy ‘Another Frequency’ as well.
One of my favorite things that Elliott does throughout Hellions is describe the wild, at times feral, highly magical time of girlhood. Whether her young, female characters are raising alligators, riding shoeless on mini bikes, imagining fantastical worlds on other planets, or obsessing over demons, they defy the conventions of traditional imagery. These young girls and teens have deep connections to the natural and the supernatural and are hellions as much as any of the boys depicted in the book.
I found this to be a somewhat challenging read at times. It was nevertheless enjoyable and unusual. 4/5 stars!
June 1, 2025
Verdant! Gnarly! Fleshy!
July 23, 2025
I thought the writing itself was very good, but the stories were strange and didn’t really pull me in. They were a bit horror, a bit magical… and though it’s usually my type, I wasn’t intrigued.
I would read another book by this writer, I find her super talented. This one was just not really for me.
Thanks Net Galley & Saga Press for an advanced copy of this book.
I would read another book by this writer, I find her super talented. This one was just not really for me.
Thanks Net Galley & Saga Press for an advanced copy of this book.
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April 9, 2025this was my first ever short story anthology read, and I really really enjoyed it. Julias writing is intoxicating, drawing you in. I picked this up on a whim at a book festival and I’m very glad i did, it’s definitely one of my favorites of the year and it’s exciting to give that to a local author
August 5, 2025
best book I’ve read this year by far!! every story pulled me in, was laced with mystery, magic and felt strangely nostalgic in the ways they talked about girlhood/growing up. I just wish some of the stories were longer
May 18, 2025
these discrete slice of life stories are all tied together by the same richness, gothic tone, & otherworldly wildness. carmen Maria Machado said it best - “rich and feral.”
March 23, 2025
This is one of the best story collections I've read in years. It reads like the work of Angela Carter and Karen Russell merged into a new dark, lovely and strange form.
July 9, 2025
Usually I am suspicious of author blurbs on books, but Carmen Maria Machado nails it. These are indeed “lush, feral” stories. Intense and word twisting in her cadence, Elliot is a masterful writer and crafter of tales. This was a very worthy read.
May 13, 2025
Elliot’s Hellions brings together 11 fantastical short stories that centers on the themes including coming-of-age, solitude, good and evil, organized religion, and the occult. The sci-fi component usually develops as the stories unfold. Before long, Elliot coaxes spells and cauldrons, monsters and witches, normies and animalistic creatures—that is, Hellions. My three favorite stories are Hellions, Bride, and The Mothers, while my three least enjoyed stories are All the Other Demons, Flying, and Moon Witch, Moon Witch. Elliot’s clairvoyant writing puts your under “a kind of spell . . . Something [we] . . . used to believe in when [we were] . . . children.” Under her influence, this luminescent feeling surges back, “a reckless sense of wonder that [we have] . . . forgotten.”
October 7, 2025
In order to adequately review this collection, I must compare it to another collection I recently read, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott. That collection was very much a romp, full of whimsy and imagination. Hellions too possesses an imaginative spirit, but much darker and more swampy. On the whole, while I enjoyed Fifty Beasts more as a collection, I thought Hellions had stronger individual stories. My favorite stories were “Bride”, “Hellion”, and “Moon Witch, Moon Witch”.
November 16, 2025
Gave me the same feeling of creative amazement that I had when I first watched Spirited Away. Unbelievably original and actually feral, not the watered down projection of feral being tossed around lately. Tons of bodily fluids and a constant chorus of cicadas. Masterclass in detail and imagery. And yet I did not enjoy the reading process. So much went over my head, often in purple prose, and I preferred the stories with some grounded structure to hang on to. Likely my own literary limitation!
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May 16, 2025Loved this to death; so fun. Lots of sneering 12-year-old tomboys who smoke Marlboros and hang out in swamps and like, accidentally summon demons. A huge vibe.
May 31, 2025
Weird girl lit at its finest
June 24, 2025
I want to live in this book
Thank ya ally for lending me da copy
Thank ya ally for lending me da copy
October 8, 2025
3.5 rounding down
Well written, visceral descriptions, but I doubt I'll remember any individual stories after a week
Well written, visceral descriptions, but I doubt I'll remember any individual stories after a week
July 5, 2025
Carmen Maria Machado is right, these stories are lush and feral. I would add ‘intoxicating’. To me they’re a rich dessert that I can only have so much of in a single sitting despite how strong my craving is for more, more, more. I took my time and read one every few days and that was perfect. Highly recommended.
May 12, 2025
What a wild, vine-draped waltz through the woods this was. Julia Elliott’s Hellion is a glorious tangle of dark fantasy, Southern Gothic, and mythic horror, told in the language of summer heat, strange children, and dirt-smudged memories.
The "hellion" theme is a perfect throughline: these stories brim with the reckless brilliance of youth, the kind of raw abandon that only exists in childhood summers where the air hums and your skin is always sticky with bug spray and sugar. Elliott captures that heady mix of innocence and cruelty so sharply. There’s beauty, yes, but also rot and hunger just beneath the surface.
Some standouts for me:
Arcadia Lakes, haunting and tender, like a lullaby with teeth. The monster in this story isn’t just something to fear, it’s something to understand, and maybe even love. It’s gorgeously eerie.
The Mothers. This one had me grinning at the pitch-black humour. A group of kids being led by forest children into ritualistic mischief? Yes, please. It’s clever, strange, and biting in its satire of adult cluelessness.
And then there's Hellion, which might just be my favourite. Butter is a perfect heroine, full of spunk and swampy know how. I swear I could hear the cicadas and smell the hot pavement and SweetTarts while reading this.
Each story felt like something unearthed rather than invented. Like finding a charm buried in the backyard, wrapped in twine and full of secrets.
Thank you to Tin House Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC. Reading this was like running barefoot through wild grass, cutting, beautiful, and unforgettable!
The "hellion" theme is a perfect throughline: these stories brim with the reckless brilliance of youth, the kind of raw abandon that only exists in childhood summers where the air hums and your skin is always sticky with bug spray and sugar. Elliott captures that heady mix of innocence and cruelty so sharply. There’s beauty, yes, but also rot and hunger just beneath the surface.
Some standouts for me:
Arcadia Lakes, haunting and tender, like a lullaby with teeth. The monster in this story isn’t just something to fear, it’s something to understand, and maybe even love. It’s gorgeously eerie.
The Mothers. This one had me grinning at the pitch-black humour. A group of kids being led by forest children into ritualistic mischief? Yes, please. It’s clever, strange, and biting in its satire of adult cluelessness.
And then there's Hellion, which might just be my favourite. Butter is a perfect heroine, full of spunk and swampy know how. I swear I could hear the cicadas and smell the hot pavement and SweetTarts while reading this.
Each story felt like something unearthed rather than invented. Like finding a charm buried in the backyard, wrapped in twine and full of secrets.
Thank you to Tin House Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC. Reading this was like running barefoot through wild grass, cutting, beautiful, and unforgettable!
June 2, 2025
It was very well written and I liked some of the stories in it, but I just don't think it was for me.
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