Bee Reads Horror

I received an advanced reader copy of this for free. I am making this review voluntarily and all opinions are my own.

What is Left Behind by Shelley Crowley is a literary horror short story collection. This pulls on your heart strings and also make you feel a bit sick. I really liked this and I’m planning on purchasing a physical copy when it’s published on June 10th.

Quick Info

• Title: What is Left Behind: a Literary Horror Collection
• Author: Shelley Crowley
• Publish Date: 10th June 2026
• Genre: Horror
• Sub-Genre: Literary Horror
• Pages: 123
• What to Expect:
  • Themes of Life and Death
  • Body Horror
  • Human-like plants
  • Revenge on horrible men

– Rating: 4 stars –

Trigger Warnings

Death of a parent, death of a child, domestic abuse, violence and body horror, kidnapping, murder, pregnancy loss, mentions of sexual assault and rape

If I have missed any out or you feel like something should be added, please leave a comment.

Synopsis

What is Left Behind contains 11 short stories ranging from 3 to 39 pages. A woman comes face to face with her own death. A forest hungry forests decides to consume a group of teenagers. A woman grows a plant from her menstrual blood. A woman gets revenge on her rapist.

My Thoughts

I really liked this collection. I hadn’t read any of Shelley Crowley’s books prior to this, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but this really surprised me. I even cried, which I rarely do.

One of my favourite stories was Just the Two of Us, which follows a woman who faces her own death – in the form a supernatural figure – except she knew he was coming due to a family curse. This was the longest story in the collection and I definitely benefited from it. The story was initially tense and creepy but turned into this emotional tale of what it means to live a fulfilling life. This is the story I cried at, which caught me by surprise. The relationship between the entity and the main character was really sweet and endearing, I liked the way it’s intimate without being romantic.

My other favourite story was Trees Don’t Eat People, which is a classic case of a group of teenagers are where they shouldn’t be and face the consequences except this time they are consumed by a very hungry forest. The way the story is written really made it for me, at first it’s written from the perspective of the forest which seems to have some hivemind qualities. It’s very menacing. The actual body horror which comes into the latter half of the story is very nausea inducing and in some ways reminds me of the infamous scene from Evil Dead but less sexual.

People are compiled of many nutrients that trees do require to develop. But trees don’t eat people. – Page 59

There are quite a few tense stories in here which I really enjoyed. Shelley Crowley is very good at building tension and suspense in a really short time. The beginning of Just the Two of Us is very tense, the entity is very creepy. Likewise, A Long Walk Alone follows a man who is trudging through snow after his wife and child have died. This one was beautifully horrifying, I had knots in my stomach for this man. The Road to Chicago was likewise intense. In this we are following a man who has taken a his girlfriend hostage. I was on the edge of my seat hoping for her to get away.

It didn’t quite reach 5 stars for me despite loving many of the stories because some of them were very short and a little underdeveloped. For example, The Best Jest was unnerving but it felt like it could’ve been longer. It read more like a character exploration than an actual story. I would like it to be longer because what is there is good but just lacking story or purpose in some ways. Another example is the This Was Never Ours which felt like there was a lot there to uncover, from the world to what the mysterious illness is. Short stories are supposed to be short and I understand why you would leave some things out to create intrigue. I just wish there was more.