Roses are Red
Carrie Green
$0.99 (Kindle Edition)
Review by Darkeva
Roses are Red is a short story collection from Carrie Green that centers around three short stories, the first of which, “A Long Distance Relationship,” starts off interestingly. Allan is a recently freed convict who finds himself on the receiving end of a plea to confess to the hit and run he just did, which the police are certain to find out about. I’ve never seen a phone used as a weapon, but it’s done well here. Alan makes the crime look convincingly like an armed robbery gone bad, and knows what he’s doing as that’s what he was convicted for in the first place. Allan is definitely a good example of an unreliable narrator. But he starts to think he didn’t finish the job, and that’s when the story gets really interesting as Allan’s personal demons come out to play.
“A Lucky Human” is more of a sci-fi influenced tale (albeit with a horrific conclusion) about a universe in which the bond between man and machine is inescapable once the latter has selected a human to be its ‘lucky human.’ And “Cash Only,” the last tale, is about a guy, Gene, who picks up a woman at a bar, but he has a great act designed to reel women in and it works well for his line of work as he’s a bounty hunter. He’s after the woman he’s pursuing because she’s an accomplice in a bank robbery, who a former friend turned in. The ending is pretty harsh, but ends the way it should.
Overall, it’s a pretty solid collection, and although it’s shorter than most, the stories are definitely of a good quality.
