Reminded me of a grown up version of the David Lubar series (In the Land of the Lawn Weenies, etc.) Eerie in a vague way. An author who knows how to let your imagination inspire fear by leaving things unsaid. In this case, I felt too much was left unsaid and the implications were too vague to be all that scary.

Rachel Ingalls is one of those writers that inspires complete devotion. Once you read one thing she's written, you'll want to read everything she's written.

Rachel Ingalls is the master of domestic horror that creeps subtly in the background until it pounces and rips out your throat. Ingalls weaves in humorous lines and observations about domesticity and the stifled expectations and roles of women, and yet she’s often cruel to her protagonists, ending many of her novellas and novels with violence and tragedy. In this sense, her writing feels similar to Shirley Jackson’s unsettling horror paired with the shocking slap on which Flannery O’Connor often relied for her story endings. It’s a shame Ingalls isn’t more well-known. She’s deserving of more love. This collection isn’t as perfect as Mrs. Caliban, but the middle novella, Friends in the Country, was so incredible, I can’t not give it a five.

The cover and Daniel Handler both suck, but Rachel Ingalls doesn't.

a TREASURE of dark situational comedy (/horror? thriller? so fun to be between genres) and you would never believe it reading the first third of any of these novellas. I love how the characters are placed in uncomfortable situations and forced into decision making that reflects their own deeper insecurities and inconsistencies. I love that the weirdos Rachel Ingalls concocts are more logical than the point of view characters.

Beautifully creepy.

Rachel Ingalls is a genius, and I bow down before her skill. All of these stories start out relatively normal and escalate into true horror-inducing eeriness. (Horror as in the old gothic term) I also love how she writes women. Her main characters are the genuinely realistic and layered "Strong Women" people claim they want and then are absolutely savage toward.

The first novella: meh. Second novella: *shudders*. Third novella: unexpected terror.
This woman is a mash-up of Jennifer Egan, Shirley Jackson and Stephen King.

Three Masquerades is an excellent series of novellas about the terror of being trapped. It was an awful but apt choice to finish during the month of our quarantine (April 2020). Although the first two novellas unnerved me, I didn't even break a sweat reading On Ice. Being a young woman stuck in a hotel with a bunch of dull ladies of a certain age? That's always been my life!