I'll break down the stories in blurb and my opinions, trying to avoid spoilers.
"Stay:" This one is almost impossible to describe without spoiling it. A teen girl lives with her cousin and grandmother, but something is immediately off from the start. There's a lot of emphasis on taking care of the graveyard and hints that cemeteries in her town aren't normal. She's attacked by the unsatisfied dead a couple times. I feel like the writing was held back by the author's determination to keep the big reveal a secret.
"The Tallest Poppy:" The vaguest of the lot, I think. Teen is trying to earn money for her plane ticket overseas to start college the next year. Takes job in creepy house. Things get creepy. But it's never revealed exactly what is going on. I didn't care for it.
"Loved By All, Save One:" Three misfit teens staying in one of their houses. The girl's parents are internet personalities so it becomes a target for a break-in. One teen is killed and the other two dragged into the woods and about to be killed. Thing is...the house and woods are haunted. I'm just gonna spoiler this one. The ghost kills the bad guys and saves the other two kids, asking them to remember. This I liked. I was worried after the first two, so this one was a welcome change.
"One-Lane Bridge:" Four idiot teens go to the local haunted bridge. Three smear blood on it and basically make wishes. The fourth, the main character, doesn't get her blood on the bridge, but her anger rouses the elemental being that's the source of the so-called haunting. The kids are basically all assholes so you don't care what happens to them, but the elemental starts getting into the heads of the three that bled on its bridge and they lure the angry girl back out there, because it wants her. She ends up defying it and walking away, her anger strong enough to make it back off. I liked the idea of this one, but not the execution. I feel like it would have made a decent longer book in the hands of Christopher Pike. When you have unlikeable characters, you need more time to make the reader give a shit.
"Ghost on the Shore:" A girl drives to the lake where her friend drowned. Her life has been ruined by her friend's death because she was in love with her and never got to tell her. The dead are supposed to return every night at 2am, and the friend does, asking to be driven to a certain address, but disappears before they get there. The girl is warned by a young waitress that what she's seeing is the lady of the lake and not really her friend. She tries again to rescue her friend but that time it becomes clear that the waitress was right. She escapes and it turns out her friend was seeing the waitress, so her confession wouldn't have gone well, had she gotten to really make it. I liked the ending of this one.
"Petrified:" Three kids are members of the Children of the Aspen, which are never fully explained. It's just made obvious that it's a group of people that work with nature to protect themselves and the forest. This one is a revenge story because the POV character was raped. I'm always up for a good supernatural revenge story. My favorite in the book.
"Third Burn:" A town cursed by a witch to burn three times. Shitty town doesn't like people that aren't like all the rest, so it victimizes a woman who doesn't want to get married and have kids, a lesbian, and the modern character, who's poor. These are the ones who burn the town over the years. I liked this.
"It Stays With You:" Kids play Bloody Mary and a supernatural force immediately kills one, then hunts the other two in the form of their deepest fears. I liked the characters better than the actual plot, which was nothing new.
"Truth or Dare:" A girl and boy go into these mysterious tunnels that are supposed to make a person choose to leave someone behind. She's trying to not be in love with him anymore because it's unrequited. I didn't hate this, but it was more dull than the others.
"The Burning One:" Mother and daughter live high up away from people, but eventually people come to their island. The daughter is tempted to get nearer, despite her mother's warnings, and becomes close with one of the boys and it doesn't end well. This is the other vague one in the book because they're some sort of supernatural something but it's not made clear what. The daughter feeds on the people but I'm not sure if it's just blood or full-on eating. I liked it despite its vagueness.
Broken down, it seems like I disliked more than I liked, but I did enjoy it while I was reading for the most part.
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