Gingerbread by Victor A. Davis

GINGER
Gingerbread by Victor A. Davis
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (20 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

When Edgar challenges his friend Arainy to sneak into the candy factory and steal sweets, she resists, even though she desperately wants to prove herself. She knows the risks. She knows the Candy Man has caught Eddie before, but intrigue gets the better of her. This is not a children’s bedtime story. It is a dark retelling of Peter Rabbit.

A sweet treat or two never hurt anyone, right?

The foreshadowing was handled nicely. It was subtle enough that a reader would have to pay close attention to what the narrator was hinting at in order to pick up on what was going on. I really enjoyed having these brief glimpses of what could be in store for the main characters. Finding them only made me more eager to see how it would all end, especially as more and more clues were revealed.

I would have liked to see more time spent developing the ending. There were a few things about it that I never quite understood. The pacing of it was so fast that there simply wasn’t the time to explain everything in detail. While I definitely appreciate it when authors expect me to do some legwork in order to figure a tale out, I needed a few more hints about what was happening in the last scene in particular.

The science fiction elements of the storyline didn’t show up right away. For a short time, I actually wondered if this was the right genre at all because of how everything was structured. There are excellent reasons why Mr. Davis wrote it this way, though, and once I figured out what those reasons were I liked the plot even more than I originally had. Arranging everything this way was definitely the right decision for this particular story.

Gingerbread made me shudder. I’d recommend it to anyone who would like to read something scary.

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