“This is a brilliant collection. Here is the human understory, a tour through the internal wilderness of soul after troubled soul. As their maker, J.R. McConvey considers each one with a clear, unfailing gaze. More than that, he does so in language that sings.”
“Different Beasts made me fall in love with the craft of short stories all over again. This collection took me to places — some uncomfortable, others hearbreaking — that I wasn’t expecting to go. This is the work of a writer of beastly talent, vision, and guts.”
“In these uncanny stories, McConvey gently pulls at the seams of reality until it frays to reveal the battered heart beneath each tale.”
“Affecting, dynamic, inventive, and inexhaustibly various — J.R. McConvey’s debut is a menagerie of remarkable beasts.”
“The sometimes-blurry line between the odd and the monstrous can make for uncomfortable discoveries. And as J.R. McConvey explores in his new collection of short stories, the monstrosity doesn’t necessarily come from the oddness. … Like Stuart McLean channeling H.P. Lovecraft.”
– Winnipeg Free Press

“McConvey’s tales incorporate elements that push at the boundaries of style and technique and occasionally veer into the territory of horror or the supernatural.”
– Quill & Quire

“Each of these stories had such an ease to them that I felt like I was reading an author I’d read a thousand times. McConvey’s prose was stunning and each of the twelve snippets of these worlds he introduced me too were fascinating.”
– Kendall Reviews