RaveEntropy... atmospheric and elegant ... invites us to look close—guided by Moniz’s lush yet urgent prose, these stories offer the reader an intimate look at growth, life, and death ... simultaneously haunting and tender ... Many of Moniz’s characters are young Black women, and Moniz’s examination of girlhood is a particular strength of this collection ... Moniz’s prose conjures a landscape just as intimate and knowable as the topography of her characters’ bodies and minds ... Moniz’s prose bursts with life and precise detail, no room or scene allowed to exist as hazy, nondescript space. Moniz gives the reader a palpable sense of life—teeming in every surface of water, in every suburban backyard, and every flat, urban expanse. Milk Blood Heat captures what I mean when I say, there’s just something about the night ... renders the terrains of girlhood and Florida as gorgeous, but not without danger.
