This book has been on my radar for a good few years now, so I'm happy I finally got around to reading it, as it was a very strong collection of short stories. As with most short story collections, I found some stories to be more personally enjoyable, and stronger in narrative tone, than others. The first story particularly gripped me, of the two girl best friends, and I do think that its slightly longer length helped the main characters to feel more concrete, as opposed to some of the later stories where I struggled to detach from one plotline without accidentally merging it into the next story sometimes. I did find that the storytelling lost a bit of its steam towards the end, and there wasn't enough of a uniqueness to differentiate them from the short stories that had come before, but overall I really enjoyed the tone of the tales, and will look out for more.

This was a compelling and nuanced collection of stories that I really enjoyed. Some were horrific, others mundane, still others hopeful, but they all shone with the strong voice of the author, which was vibrant throughout. My personal favourites were 'The Hearts of my Enemies' and 'Snow' but all of the stories had a lot to give and were both interesting and entertaining. Overall, this was a great debut and I will be eager to see what Dantiel comes out with next.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I'm very into short story anthologies at the moment as well as books about the female experience. This combined both these and j really enjoyed it.

I absolutely loved this short story collection, and I'm usually not a fan of them, as I find it hard to invest in the characters. With Milk Blood Heat I didn't have that feeling: I was invested in every character and in their journey.

This was quite an eerie short story collection; two thirteen year old girls make a game out of all the ways in which they could die, a woman struggles not to resent her stepdaughter following her miscarriage, a man is unable to process that his wife is dying from cancer. Mortality is the theme and while some of the stories stuck in the memory more than others, there was a bewitching quality to the book as a whole. As one character Sylvie attends a moon festival, she sits 'among them, enraptured by their stories, realizing for the first time that every one of us was a link stretching back, mother to daughter to mother, in an unbroken chain from the center of time, connected by milk and blood.' There are moments of deep recognition between women, friends, mothers and daughters and it is this sense of connection which lingered long after I finished the book.

The collection of short stories look a various lives, survival/coping and relationships.

They are rather powerful getting the feel of the emotions and struggles, but also looking at consequences.

The stories look over various topics, sexual abuse, loss (miscarriage), relationship between siblings, dealing with treatment, unhappy marriage and so on. Some of the stories are a bit dark and very detailed descriptions that can come across as gruesome.

The stories certainly have an impact.

A provocative and powerful collection of short stories, centering on painful aspects of female expereince. The women of these stories struggle through adversity on a daily basis in a range of intimate relationships and settings.

Moniz is a true storyteller, plunging the reader into the lives of these women, always leaving us wanting more.

A very successful collection.

A glorious, life-affirming collection of stories and unforgettable characters which capture the profound moments of connection that are offered by every interaction, every day. Moniz’s short vignettes spin stories of love, friendship and sisterhood, and take us from city rooftops to aquariums, from churches to the open ocean, from death into life: each tale vividly rendered like a personal memory, with conclusions that linger long into the next chapter.

Featured in the July issue of Cambridge Edition Magazine

A fantastic, eye-opening collection of short stories. The author writes with passion and a fiery determination to tell stories. 

The characters in each story were real - they reached from the pages and burst into the world as if they really existed. 

The stories were painful, honest and illuminating. I can’t wait to recommend this book to everyone. It was incredible.

"Milk Blood Heat" is an extremely strong debut short stories collection; Moniz does not shy away from examining tough subjects in both an engaging and delicate way, highlighting the complexity of the themes she delves into.

A collection of 11 short stories, set in America. Some serious subjects are covered death, miscarriage breakdowns etc however just as you getting to grips with the character and situation, it ends. The writing is very good and would definitely like to read more from this author but not more short stories. Thank you #NetGalley for the copy to review.

Milk, Blood, Heat is a great collection of short stories which each focus on the different and difficult situations that can arise in life.

Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story delves into the ordinary lives of young girls, women and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent and personal reckoning. The book covers difficult topics including suicide and miscarriage

I generally don’t read a lot of short stories because I can find them difficult to get into, or when I do, they end and I’m frustrated and left wanting to know more. However, these stories are so well written, many are left ‘unresolved’ but for once, I actually liked that. It worked with these stories. The author very much leaves it to your own interpretation.

A good collection that I’m glad I got the opportunity to read. Will definitely recommend for those who enjoy short stories and to those who haven’t read any but want to, this is a great place to start

This book was made up of a selection of short stories. I thought they were well written but did find it frustrating that I’d just be getting into the characters and how the story was going to develop and it would end. Then repeat.

Personally, I’d have preferred fewer stories but a little longer to find out what happens next!

Thank you to #NetGalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review #MilkBloodHeat

This was such a strong collection of stories, and incredibly powerful in its quiet intensity. I loved the title story (Milk Blood Heat), which reminded me a bit of Mariana Enriquez' stories. As a person who doesn't normally like short story collections and inevitably give them 3 stars, this truly stood out to me and I will keep an eye out to everything Dantiel Monitz writes next!

Dantiel W. Moniz’s debut collection of short stories, Milk Blood Heat, plays on some familiar themes: quite a few of the stories are about a pair of girls on the cusp of adolescence, knotted together by their own closeness but already sensing the encroachment of the outside world, where class, race and sexual attractiveness will start to define them. I am quite tired of fiction that stresses the strangeness of girlhood – why can’t we write about teenagers like they’re people, like everybody else? – but to be fair, Moniz only occasionally uses this register. Two things stood out to me from this collection, which I otherwise found a bit forgettable. One, most of the stories continue a couple of pages past where I expected where they were going to end, which was refreshing, as Moniz pulled a bit more out of each situation than I thought it could hold. Two, what will stay with me from Milk Blood Heat is not the plots of its stories but a series of arresting, brutal images. A woman grieving for a lost baby is fascinated by an octopus in an aquarium consuming its own tentacles. A girl hangs onto her non-swimmer friend to save herself when their raft drifts too far out to sea. A sister confronts her younger brother’s school bully in a closet and terrifies him. Tying into what I’ve already said, it’s not surprising that all these scenes came near the end of their respective stories. It’s almost as if Moniz had to write through the mundane before reaching the surprising. I’ve just read too many collections like this for Milk Blood Heat to stand out, I’m afraid, but Moniz definitely has promise. 3.5 stars.

“People always believe they’re nice in their own heads. That’s what makes it so scary when you look at the state of the world.”

This collection of short stories explores the lives of young girls, women and men who live in the suburbs of Florida as they each find themselves in a moment of personal reckoning.

I have always said I am not a fan of short story collections but this book has changed my mind!! Every single word in these stories was essential and important and I felt that each character and story had ample exploration and depth before moving on. With previous short story collections I have found that the story ends without much time for reflection or impact, but this was absolutely not the case here!

Each story tackles a different issue but they are all centred around personal reckoning and the characters were written in such a beautiful way that you could connect with them in such a short story. Some of the issues covered include grief, infertility and pregnancy, race, mental illness and family.

I highly recommend if you are looking for a new short story collection to dive into!

TW// miscarriage, suicide, death, child abuse, sexual assault drug use

What a fantastic collection of short stories!

Each of them is so compelling, thought provoking and powerful.

Dantiel's writing is just so clever, the depiction of the traumas is heartbreaking.

The themes broached are not easy: loss, death, miscarriage, suicide, illness etc. and it leaves you wondering whether you would have gone down the same path in the same situation.

Thank you NetGalley and Atlantic Books for the opportunity to review.

I’m sorry to say that I just couldn’t get on with this author’s writing. While I understood most of the subjects that were being tackled, I found the prose abstract to the point of being dense. The stories felt largely incomplete and finished rather abruptly, often when I was just starting to connect with the characters. As I finished each story, I would find myself casting around looking for meaning in what I’d just read and not really finding it.

I’ve no doubt that this collection will find its market amongst readers who are perhaps more in tune with this style of writing, but it wasn’t for me.

Milk Blood Heat is Dantiel W. Moniz’s bewitching debut collection of powerful short stories. One of the most exciting discoveries in today's literary landscape, the anthology depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another. In the title story a thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend as they enter into blood pacts, converse about death and experiment all while exploring their freedom, when an unexpected tragedy occurs.

A woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter--whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life in deeply affecting spectral imagery, in Feast; In Tongues, a teenager resists the stranglehold of her family’s brutal religious patriarchy and that of their church pastor and is accused of courting the devil leading her on a transformative journey of self-discovery; and two estranged siblings take a road trip to Santa Fe with their father's ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them while attempting to fix their long-fractured relationship, in Thicker Than Water. Necessary Bodies tells the story of a woman with a somewhat rocky relationship with her mother who must decide whether she herself is ready to become a mother as she opts to either keep or abort her new pregnancy as she plans an event far more inconsequential: her mother’s lavish 50th birthday party.

And a middle-aged man finds himself escaping to the local pub to cope with his wife’s decision to decline chemotherapy to treat her cancer, in The Loss of Heaven. The 11 stories all focus on transformative experiences in the lives of women featuring themes such as loss, love, temptation, coming-of-age, death, motherhood and the strain of family life. We follow each of the women as their lives fracture and emotion comes to the forefront. The themes are so diverse yet as a whole are cohesive and it's clear that these stories are interconnected through the portrayal of such emotion and the precise, moving prose underlining each one. A dark, compelling set of multilayered stories with characters who exude humanity. Each tale stands on its own but it's as a whole that these pieces make the most impact. Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat forms an ouroboros of stories that bewitch with their truth, announcing the arrival of a bright new literary star. Highly recommended.

4+

A very strong debut collection of short stories, Moniz excels at portraying the friendships and interior lives of her protagonists - often young women of colour. The stories are taut, and the writing very strong. If pressed to think of authors or books to compare this to I think The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans would be one of the first to spring to mind. Not much more to add, beyond that I would agree with my GR friend Will in saying that Moniz is one to watch.