Title: Blind Date with a Werewolf Author: Patricia Briggs Publisher: Ace Publication date: October 21, 2025 Length: 288 pages Genre: Fantasy Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
When the deadly werewolf Asil is gifted five blind dates by some anonymous “friends,” his reclusive life will never be the same, in this enthralling novel in stories from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson series.
Includes two all-new stories as well as three previously published stories.
DearAsil:
We are worried about you. A werewolf alone is a sad thing, especially at Christmastime. So we have a challenge for five dates in three weeks. We have taken the work out of it and connected you with five people from online dating sites. You should also know that we have informed the whole pack and instigated a betting pool. Have fun!
Sincerely, Your Concerned Friends
For fans of the Mercy Thompson and Alpha & Omega series by Patricia Briggs, this new book — a novel composed of five connected stories — is a real treat. For someone who hasn’t read those series, this book might be more of a challenge, but still lots of fun.
Asil Moreno, known among werewolves as the Moor, is a centuries-old werewolf known for his power, violence, and instability. Only his Alpha, the ruler of all werewolves in North America, is dominant enough to keep Asil under control. Asil is deadly, but beautiful, and he knows it. He also has very little interest in other people, and certainly no interest in romance, not since the death of his mate many, many years earlier.
But Asil’s friends think he needs a boost — and, we suspect, also are looking to have a little fun at his expense. Through anonymous emails, they challenge him to go on a series of blind dates that they’ll arrange for him. Asil is not enthusiastic in the slightest, but there’s a pack bet that he won’t succeed in completing the five dates of the challenge, and Asil is not one to ever back down.
Let’s just say that the dates don’t go exactly as planned. Each supposedly romantic set-up turns into a mission involving lots more danger and blood than candlelight and roses. In each case, it’s extremely entertaining to see Asil present himself as a respectable, desirable date… only to have each encounter go entirely sideways.
Blind Date with a Werewolf includes three stories previously published in other anthologies, plus two stories that are original to this book. Taken as a whole, they make a highly enjoyable reading experience, with a great story arc, lots of amusing character moments, and plenty of high stakes and action sequences.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the events of Blind Date with a Werewolf carry over into the greater universe of Patricia Briggs’s series. (The next new book will be #7 in the Alpha & Omega series, tentatively scheduled for release sometime in 2026).
As I mentioned, Blind Date with a Werewolf is perfect for fans of the related series. I do think it could be read on its own even without familiarity with its greater fictional universe, although I think some of the intricacies about pack dynamics and werewolf nature might be harder to unravel.
In any case, this really is a very fun book, and I tore through it in about a day and a half. Asil’s adventures are funny, fast-paced, and have just enough danger in them to keep us readers on the edge of our seats. Of course, now I’m dying for more of this world… I may need to dive back in and do a reread of the Alpha & Omega books, at the very least.
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Title: The Hebrew Teacher Author: Maya Arad Translated by: Jessica Cohen Publisher: New Vessel Press Publication date: March 19, 2024 Length: 320 pages Genre: Contemporary fiction Source: Library Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States, seek to overcome crises. Ilana is a veteran Hebrew instructor at a Midwestern college who has built her life around her career. When a young Hebrew literature professor joins the faculty, she finds his post-Zionist politics pose a threat to her life’s work. Miriam, whose son left Israel to make his fortune in Silicon Valley, pays an unwanted visit to meet her new grandson and discovers cracks in the family’s perfect façade. Efrat, another Israeli in California, is determined to help her daughter navigate the challenges of middle school, and crosses forbidden lines when she follows her into the minefield of social media. In these three stirring novellas—comedies of manners with an ambitious blend of irony and sensitivity—celebrated Israeli author Maya Arad probes the demise of idealism and the generation gap that her heroines must confront.
The Hebrew Teacher is a collection of three novellas that, taken as a whole, provide insight into experiences of alienation, assimilation, and family generational estrangement. Originally published in Hebrew, this collection’s smooth English translation provides powerful, moving stories with universal themes.
While not normally a fan of short fiction, I was immediately pulled into the characters’ lives in each of these three novellas. Their stories are so relatable that they actually disturbed me quite a bit, as they highlight the ordinary heartbreak that daily life can present.
The first story, The Hebrew Teacher, focuses on Ilana, a woman approaching retirement who has spent her entire career teaching Hebrew at a midwestern university. She reminisces on the early days:
When she’d arrived in ’71, it had been a good time for Hebrew. When she told people she was from Israel, they used to give her admiring looks. […] But now was not a good time for Hebrew.
Ilana faces an alarming drop in her enrollment rates for the new semester, while also dealing with a new professor of Hebrew and Jewish literature — someone with authority over her classes — whose political views put him and Ilana on opposite sides of an academic cold war.
The Hebrew Teacher has a sad energy; we feel for Ilana as an older woman reflecting on the days when both she and her life’s work were once appreciated, forced to realize that she’s been left behind by changing times.
The second story, A Visit (Scenes) is also achingly sad. Miriam arrives in Silicon Valley to visit her son, daughter-in-law, and their toddler. She’s never met her grandson before, and her son and his wife seem distinctly uninterested in welcoming her into their home and lives. Told through vignettes (scenes) over the course of Miriam’s three-week visit, through Miriam’s POV as well as the other two adults’, the story unfolds in short glimpses that convey the utter estrangement Miriam feels as well as the tension within the household. Miriam’s visits with another grandmother and her daughter-in-law add poignancy, as they show the happiness and closeness that have eluded Miriam. For some reason, this story just broke my heart, especially Miriam’s reflections on the closeness of parents and children during the childhood years, and how adult children exclude their parents from their lives.
Make New Friends, the third and final piece in this collection, feels rather difference in focus, but is still disturbing in tone and content. Once again featuring a family of Israeli ex-pats in Silicon Valley, Make New Friends is told through the viewpoint of Efrat, a mother who worries constantly about her 13-year-old daughter’s lack of friends. As Efrat stews over Libby’s social standing, she crosses some major lines on social media, all the while coming to terms with her own long-simmering anxieties about friendship and belonging. The story is well told, and made me very uncomfortable — and then ends pretty abruptly. I expected a more dramatic conclusion; it seems to just stop.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, even though I don’t do particularly well with short fiction and am always left feeling a bit unsatisfied. The stories in The Hebrew Teacher present ordinary people dealing with life’s frustrations and disappointments, with characters who feel well-defined and specific. I appreciated the depiction of the cultural struggles of characters who end up livinge far from their original homes and families, and what this means for their children as well.
The Hebrew Teacher won the 2025 National Jewish Book Award for Hebrew Fiction in Translation. Maya Arad’s newest novel, Happy New Years, was released in the US this month, and I look forward to reading it.
Purchase links: Amazon – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.
Title: The Answer is No Author: Fredrik Backman Publisher: Amazon Original Stories Publication date: December 1, 2024 Length: 68 pages Genre: Contemporary fiction Source: Purchased Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
In a hilarious short story from New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, the absurdities of modern life cause one man’s solitary world to spin suddenly, and comically, out of control.
Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone?
Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.
A new story from Fredrik Backman is practically guaranteed to be a joy to read… so does The Answer is No succeed? The answer is yes!
This funny, quirky tale is about a man who wants the world to leave him alone, but the world doesn’t seem to get the message. He’s perfectly happy, until the frying pan incident spirals out of control, bringing visitor after visitor to his door.
It’s a cute, clever story with a simple plot. What makes it a gem is Backman’s writing, of course. Here are a few choice snippets:
Lucas is happy. This is a very provoking thing to the world. Because people aren’t supposed to be happy, they’re only supposed to want to be happy, because how otherwise are you supposed to be able to sell things to them?
Just to be clear: It’s not that Lucas hates other people. He just really enjoys being where other people aren’t. He works well in groups as long as it’s groups of fewer than two people.
“During the night someone left an old frying pan on the ground outside the recycling room!” the first head explains, as if this were the beginning of a detective novel where a dead body’s been found in a lake, and a divorced police officer from the big city who has just returned to her childhood home is drawn into an investigation that forces her to confront her past, but which may or may not also give her the chance to fall in love with a man in a flannel shirt who has a golden retriever and a charming down-to-earth view of life.
Lucas opens the door with the defeated manner of a sausage that dressed itself up as a carrot to avoid being eaten by a bear, only to be found by a rabbit.
The Answer is No is available now as a First Reads pick for Amazon Prime subscribers, and will be released officially as of December 1st. It’s a sweet, cheery treat — and obviously, a must-read for Fredrik Backman fans!
This was another of those weeks where quiet time was hard to find — so rather than trying to get through a full novel, I kept my audiobook listening limited to short stories and novellas. The results were mostly positive! Here’s a quick round-up of what I listened to and what I thought:
Renowned author Peter S. Beagle returns to the world of The Last Unicorn in this resonant and moving two-novella collection, featuring the award-winning “Two Hearts” and the brand-new “Sooz.”
The Last Unicorn is one of fantasy’s most revered classics, beloved by generations of readers and with millions of copies in print. Revisiting the world of that novel, Beagle’s long-awaited Hugo and Nebula-Awards-winning “Two Hearts” introduced the irrepressible Sooz on a quest to save her village from a griffin, and explored the bonds she formed with unforgettable characters like the wise and wonderful Molly Grue and Schmendrick the Magician.
In the never-before-published “Sooz,” the events of “Two Hearts” are years behind its narrator, but a perilous journey lies ahead of her, in a story that is at once a tender meditation on love and loss, and a lesson in finding your true self.
The Way Home is suffused with Beagle’s wisdom, profound lyricism, and sly wit; and collects two timeless works of fantasy.
I read Peter S. Beagle’s classic fantasy tale The Last Unicorn about a year ago, and loved the characters, the setting, and the storytelling. There’s also a lovely graphic novel version — out of print and hard to find at a reasonable price, but fortunately, my library had a copy.
The Way Home, published in 2023, is a bind-up of two novellas. Two Hearts was originally published in 2006 (and won both the Nebula and Hugo awards); Sooz is a new work published for this edition.
Two Hearts is lovely. It’s the story of nine-year-old Sooz, who’s brokenhearted by the losses inflicted on her village by a marauding griffin — and with perfectly reasonable nine-year-old logic, decides that the only solution is to go find the king herself and ask him to come save the day. Sooz’s journey takes her to King Lir, introduced in The Last Unicorn as a young prince. Here, he’s an old, old man who spends most of his time dozing on his throne… but dons his armor one last time because a brave girl asks him to. Two other familiar characters, Schmendrick and Molly Grue, add warmth and comfort to the story. It’s all quite wonderful.
Sooz works less well. In this novella, Sooz is 17-years-old, and discovers on her birthday that her parents had another daughter before she was born — a beautiful little girls named Jenia who went off to live with the faeries (or “Dreamies” as she calls them) and never came back. Sooz knows in her heart that it’s her destiny to find Jenia and bring her home. What follows is a quest into a land of magic and terrors, in which Sooz finds a true ally, loses parts of herself, and comes to terms with who she herself truly is.
To be honest, Sooz drags quite a bit. The audio narrator does a very nice job with the tone and the characters, and creates a dreamlike experience for the listener, but the story itself is very drawn out, and I struggled to pay attention on and off throughout the story.
[SPOILER]: There’s a rape scene (more implied than graphic, but it’s clear what’s happened) that in my opinion is completely unnecessary and very out of place in a fantasy tale. The story can hold darkness without adding in sexual assault. I was disturbed that the author felt this was something that needed to be included — surely, some other sort of bad experience could have befallen the character to shake her up and make her realize the danger she was in.
Overall, I’d say that Two Hearts is absolutely worth a listen, especially for anyone who’s read and loved The Last Unicorn. I’m on the fence about Sooz. There are some interesting elements, but it just didn’t hold my interest as a whole, and that one scene makes it difficult to say that this is a story I’d recommend.
Penguin Audio: 5 hours, 22 minutes Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Sally has recently left an unfulfilling job to volunteer at a living history museum, where she is assigned to the Death House. Every day, she dons Victorian mourning garb and describes traditional funeral services to tourists. It sounds depressing as hell, but for Sally, it’s less depressing than her tepid marriage to her childhood sweetheart.
This becomes all too clear when she accidentally travels through time and space to a liminal world where the ghosts of the living history museum haunt its grounds. There, she meets and falls hard for Victorian-era pretty boy Nathaniel. Their heady, romantic encounters douse Sally in the sad reality that her marriage is anything but and leave her tempted to join Nathaniel permanently in his realm.
Is Sally’s marriage literally a fate worse than death, or is there another way altogether?
When I stumbled across an audiobook short story by Rachel Harrison — author of such fantastic books as Black Sheep, Sharp Teeth, and Cackle — I knew I had to give it a listen. What fun! In this quick, tightly drawn tale, a disaffected young woman dresses up in Victorian mourning clothes to give living history museum tours, then accidentally finds herself in a ghost-filled limbo on the same grounds. Sally and Nathaniel fall instantly in love, and he proposes to her on the spot, but there really is only one way for Sally to stay with him forever. Is it worth it?
This ghostly story is eerie and has some great supernatural elements, but is also terrific in the way it shows a young woman recognizing the stagnation of her married life and the need to take control of her own destiny. Definitely worth checking out!
Audible Original; 47 minutes Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets.
This was a funny choice for me, because I didn’t love In the Lives of Puppets as much as I expected to (given that I’ve been head over heels for everything else I’ve read by TJ Klune). And if I didn’t love the novel, why would I expect a better outcome with its prequel?
But all’s well that ends well: I’m so happy I decided to give Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! a try.
The story is fairly straightforward: Douglas is an android who’s faithfully carried out his factory work and followed all the rules for the ten years of his existence. For his final week before being rebooted, he’s granted a pass that gives him the freedom to leave the factory and explore life in the world of humans. As he spends time in parks and streets and markets and more, he sees birds and colors and people, hears music and starts to dance, and reads countless books — including a hidden book of philosophy by René Descartes, which gets him thinking about who and what he is.
This story is sheer joy — it has plenty of sadness too, but the writing is gorgeous, and it’s exhilarating to see the world from Douglas’s point of view. The audiobook narrator rocks. A highly recommended listening experience.
Macmillan Audio: 1 hours, 27 minutes Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
It takes nothing less than a fateful natural disaster to throw two opposites together in a ground-shakingly charming short story by the New York Times bestselling author of Drunk on Love.
This Valentine’s Day, Daisy Murray has her heart set on binge-watching rom-coms. Instead, an earthquake traps her inside a bakery with its impossibly rude and insufferably handsome owner and head baker. They already have a history: she’s always smiled, he’s always scowled. Where better to finally get to know each other than amid the disaster? Then again, they have no choice. Besides, it could have its sweet, undeniable, and unpredictable perks.
Jasmine Guillory’s Drop, Cover, and Hold On is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute, irresistibly romantic stories about finding love when and where you least expect it. They can be read or listened to in one sitting. Let’s make a date of it.
I don’t know that I have much to say about this short story. The synopsis says it all! Main character Daisy gets trapped inside her favorite bakery — alongside the very hot bakery owner — when an earthquake hits. She thinks he hates her… but maybe his scowly face has distracted her from realizing that he always has her favorite pastries available on the days she usually stops in?
This story is sweet (ha!), flirty, and fun. It won’t rock your world (earthquake pun time!!), but the description of the baked goods hooked me almost as much as the chemistry between the characters. It’s a fun, quick listen.
Audible Original: 1 hours, 5 minutes Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Not too bad for a week when I didn’t think I’d have time for audiobooks! I don’t usually gravitate toward short stories, but this week, this selection was just what I needed.
Rainbow Rowell has won fans all over the world by writing about love and life in a way that feels true.
In her first collection, she gives us nine beautifully crafted love stories. Girl meets boy camping outside a movie theater. Best friends debate the merits of high school dances. A prince romances a troll. A girl romances an imaginary boy. And Simon Snow himself returns for a holiday adventure.
It’s a feast of irresistible characters, hilarious dialogue, and masterful storytelling—in short, everything you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell book.
A new book by Rainbow Rowell is always a treat — and while I tend to shy away from short story collections, there was no way that I’d pass this one by.
Scattered Showers is a collection of nine stories, four previously published (of which I’d read three), and five brand new for this book. Familiar characters make appearances, but there’s lots of new stuff too. Overall, the tone is upbeat and often romantic. Content skews YA, but there’s some adult fiction too.
About the individual stories:
Midnights: Previously published in the anthology My True Love Gave to Me (2014). This one was new to me, A sweet friends-to-romance story, taking place over a series of New Year’s Eves. I liked it!
Kindred Spirits: Previously published as a stand-alone for World Book Day (2016). A re-read for me, but I was happy to read it again. A teen girl who’s a die-hard Star Wars fan decides to wait on line for the four days leading up to the release of the new movie. The experience isn’t what she expected it to be… but it’s just what she needs.
Winter Songs for Summer: New to this edition. Set in a college dorm, a girl who blasts sad music to wallow in her heartbreak is confronted by the boy whose room is directly under hers. At first, he just wants her to listen to something other than the song that’s driving him bananas, but as they share music and then cafeteria meals, they (of course) find an unexpected connection.
The Snow Ball: Also new. Two best friends, Owen and Libby, always spend Christmas Eve at home together watching movies… until the year Owen decides it’s time to go out. Romantic and positive and lots of fun.
If the Fates Allow: Originally published as an Amazon (and Audible) Original in 2021, I’d listened to the story already. The main character is Reagan, who we know from tthe Fangirl novel. Here, college is in the past, and we’re in the first year of the pandemic. Reagan goes to spend Thanksgiving with her isolated grandfather, but finds a surprising friendship with the young man spending the holiday next door. A socially distanced conversation from their neighboring back decks has Reagan reconsidering some of her non-COVID-related solitary ways.
The Prince and the Troll: Another one originally released as a stand-alone Amazon Original (2020), it’s a fairy tale-esque tale of a modern man who encounters a friendly bridge troll. There’s some climate change elements and odd concepts about life on the Road; it feels like a fable at times, but there’s also quite a lot of Starbucks involved. I felt that I didn’t really get it when I first listened to the audiobook, and reading it as part of Scattered Showers, it didn’t feel any clearer for me.
Mixed Messages: This new story mostly consists of texts between two friends, Beth and Jennifer, two main characters from the author’s 2011 novel Attachments. You don’t have to have read Attachments to appreciate the story. The characters are now in their forties, and we get a glimpse of their lives, their hopes and disappointments, and how their friendship has supported them both across the years. It’s lovely.
Snow for Christmas: A Simon Snow story! If you’re a Simon fan (count me in!), you’ll absolutely want to read this sweet story about Simon and Baz’s Christmas. Set after the events of the Simon series, it just made me really happy to see where these two are in their lives.
In Waiting: This quirky story might just be my favorite of the bunch! I won’t say anything about it, but it’s absolutely worth checking out!
Summing it all up:
This book is a treat for Rainbow Rowell fans! And the physical book itself is lovely, with a shiny cover, blue-colored page ends, cute illustrations throughout, and a ribbon placeholder. Definitely a great gift idea for anyone who loves the Simon books or any other of this author’s books and characters.
With a trip coming up and limited time this week, I decided to listen to a bunch of Audible’s free short stories rather than start a full-length audiobook. It was a mixed bag overall — here’s what I listened to and what I thought:
Imagine if you made one little mistake when you were young and were punished for it for the rest of your life. Well, that’s what happened to Lydia (yes, that Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister from Pride and Prejudice), and she’s here to set the record straight. Hold on to your teacups and get ready for sophisticated (and a little bit naughty) hot takes and witty banter that’ll make you laugh—and think.
We meet Lydia just as she is denounced by her family, exiled miles from home, and married to the rogue George Wickham, who seems to love all women…except his own wife. She must learn to summon great bravery to carve out a place for herself in the society that has brutally rejected her.
Lydia isn’t the traditional Austen heroine, and this isn’t a traditional, polite period drama. Lydia is a badass. A trailblazer. She’s fierce and fiercely funny. And she might inhabit the Regency period, but she’s fighting the same battle many of us are today—having to defend the decisions she’s made and the person she chooses to love, to shut out the “trolls” and gossips, to hold her head high in a world that will judge her for any mistake she makes.
Starring Academy Award nominee Jessie Buckley (Fargo, The Lost Daughter) and Johnny Flynn (Lovesick, Stardust), this hilarious and timely listen is for fans of classics with a twist. Writer and creator playwright Sarah Page says that she wrote Mrs. Wickham to “entertain people with a romantic, optimistic, and seductive comedy,” but that there’s also a “message held at its heart to treat each other with kindness.”If you binged Bridgerton, this one’s for you.
I’m always up for a Pride and Prejudice spin-off, and was intrigued by the idea of following Lydia after her marriage. I’m not sure that this story actually needed Lydia Bennet, though — it’s a cute gimmick, but really, this could be the story of any woman surviving scandal and finding redemption (and somehow, even falling in love with her own husband). I didn’t realize in advance that this would be a full-cast audio play, rather than narrators reading an audiobook. The cast as a whole is entertaining and funny, but some of the production elements are decidedly weird (loud rock music in bar scenes, for examples) or icky (hearing Lydia vomit after a bout of ill-advised drinking). Overall, I was entertained enough to finish, but that’s about it.
Audible Original: 2 hours, 3 minutes Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Three more from Amazon’s Getaway collection — six short stories described as:
Perfect vacations or last resorts? In this collection of short psychological thrillers, bestselling authors bring trouble to paradise. Today’s itinerary: surfing, sailing, hiking, facing your worst fears . . . Most dream vacations never live up to expectations—but few cause this many nightmares.
Of the six, I picked stories by authors I already was familiar with:
On the New England coast, an irresistible vacation rental draws a woman into the sinister secrets of her past in a cunning short mystery with a gothic twist by a New York Times bestselling author.
Clea McAllister returns to the Newport haven of her childhood, a gilded mansion by the sea once owned by her beloved grandmother. Now she is a paying guest at her own ancestral home, and Clea’s vacation hides a darker intention: to confront the estate lawyer who stole her rightful inheritance. But wicked games are still being played at Belle Mer, and Clea uncovers more than she ever intended.
Quick entertainment — this is a suspense story about a stolen inheritance, a fight to regain control of the family mansion, loyal servants, a missing lawyer… There’s a lot going on here, and it all comes together well by the end. This is a fast listen, and the author uses the short story format to quickly build tension and intrigue before a sudden shock at the end.
Audible Original; 1 hour, 21 minutes Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
An extravagant anniversary trip turns into a desperate scramble for survival in an unsettling short story about desire, manipulation, and revenge by a New York Times bestselling author.
Psychiatrist Olivia Cole is a shell of herself after only two years with her tyrannical husband, the outwardly perfect Sebastian. On their two-year anniversary, she’s subjected to one power move too many when Sebastian whisks her away on a surprise trip—first to the charming capital of Sweden, then to an unexpected final destination. Miles from home and help, the only way for Olivia to wrest back control of her life is to give Sebastian an even bigger, shocking surprise.
Ummm, not sure what to make of this one. It’s suspenseful and creepy, but overall, it’s such a disturbing look at a woman whose lost all semblance of self-determination to her cruel, controlling husband that it’s impossible to actually enjoy listening to the story. Then again, I’m not particularly a fan of thrillers in general, so this may have been just a step too far for me in a genre I’m not always comfortable with. Your mileage may vary, but I found the plot details too awful to actually consider it entertainment.
Audible Original: 1 hours, 11 minutes Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
“Speak your truth.” An icebreaker leads to unintended consequences for two strangers aboard a luxury yacht in this seductively twisty short story by the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister.
When Ella boards a sumptuous charter off the coast of Australia, she feels…dread. Her husband, Mac, the social butterfly who makes these wellness retreats so much easier to navigate, is stuck at work, leaving her exposed to the other passengers. Luckily, she forms an instant bond with the charismatic Chloe, a newly single woman salving a broken heart. But as the friendship grows, Ella discovers they share more than the need for an escape, and their devastating connection has the power to forever alter their lives.
Sally Hepworth is so terrific at creating interpersonal dynamics that are something other than what they initially appear to be. In this short story, the main character’s sea voyage takes a dramatically different direction when she meets another passenger whose story has just a few too many familiar elements to it. The psychological drama and tension build throughout, although I was expecting a much darker resolution to it all. I wasn’t entirely comfortable once I realized that infidelity would be a major theme — that’s not something I particularly enjoy or look for in fiction, but given that the Getaway collection seems to be squarely in the thriller/suspense genre, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Overall, this quick listen held my attention and was well performed — not a bad piece of entertainment, for what it is.
Side note: I would absolutely hate to go on this wellness sea voyage! Only eight passengers, too many touchy-feely sharing sessions, intrusive challenges… so not my idea of a fun vacation!
Audible Original: 1 hours, 44 minutes Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
As I’ve said many, many times on this blog, I am not a big fan of short stories. I deliberately chose to listen to shorter works this week, but I’m not particularly surprised that none of them actually wowed me. Still, they passed the time and held my interest! Who knows? Other readers may really enjoy these, especially (with the Getaway stories) for those who love suspenseful fiction.
Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.
Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.
Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!
Title: Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory Author: Raphael Bob-Waksberg Published: 2020 Length: 256 pages
What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):
From the creator and executive producer of the beloved and universally acclaimed television series BoJack Horseman, a fabulously off-beat collection of short stories about love–the best and worst thing in the universe
Written with all the scathing dark humor that is a hallmark of BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s stories will make readers laugh, weep, and shiver in uncomfortably delicious recognition. In “A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion,” a young couple planning a wedding is forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices. “Missed Connection–m4w” is the tragicomic tale of a pair of lonely commuters eternally failing to make that longed-for contact. The members of a rock band in “Up-and-Comers” discover they suddenly have superpowers–but only when they’re drunk. And in “The Serial Monogamist’s Guide to Important New York City Landmarks,” a woman maps her history of romantic failures based on the places she and her significant others visited together.
Equally at home with the surreal and the painfully relatable (or both at once), Bob-Waksberg delivers a killer combination of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability. The resulting collection is a punchy, perfect bloody valentine.
How and when I got it:
I bought the paperback about a year ago.
Why I want to read it:
To be very specific, I bought this book on my daughter’s recommendation. This goes back to a blog post I did that was about her favorite books read so far that year, and she told me that this story collection was a must-read.
This is definitely not an obvious choice for me, because I’m not much of a short story reader. I don’t have a great attention span when it comes to story collections, and have a tendency to give up after only a few stories.
Still, I do love (a) the title of this collection, (b) the cover, and (c) the fact that my daughter — who has excellent taste in books — spoke so highly of it. (I’m also fairly certain that the author’s family and my family have a connection back in our home town, not that that really matters). From what I can see from the synopsis, the stories sound weird and quirky, which could mean that they’d be right up my alley.
Title: Shit Cassandra Saw Author: Gwen E. Kirby Publisher: Penguin Publication date: January 11, 2022 Length: 288 pages Genre: Short stories Source: Purchased Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Margaret Atwood meets Buffy in these funny, warm, and furious stories of women at their breaking points, from Hellenic times to today.
Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn’t mean she’s resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren’t ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers. Gwen E. Kirby experiments with found structures–a Yelp review, a WikiHow article–which her fierce, irreverent narrators push against, showing how creativity within an enclosed space undermines and deconstructs the constraints themselves. When these women tell the stories of their triumphs as well as their pain, they emerge as funny, angry, loud, horny, lonely, strong protagonists who refuse be secondary characters a moment longer. From “The Best and Only Whore of Cym Hyfryd, 1886” to the “Midwestern Girl [who] is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories,” Kirby is playing and laughing with the women who have come before her and they are telling her, we have always been this way. You just had to know where to look.
Please do judge a book by its cover… at least in this case. Shit Cassandra Saw‘s cover is bright, almost eye-searing, and clearly puts the reader on notice that it’s time to shake things up.
This collection of short stories covers times and settings from the ancient world to the contemporary, mixing in fantastical elements with pieces that are all too real. The women in these stories are angry, despondent, and tired of being ignored or mistreated or threatened. Told through a variety of styles and voices, the stories work as a collection by playing with perception and tropes, and letting women’s voices shout out clearly.
All that being said, some of the stories in Shit Cassandra Saw worked better for me than others. In general, I really liked the historical pieces, although a few of the contemporary stories really appealed as well.
My favorites include:
A Few Normal Things That Happen A Lot: My absolute favorite of the bunch, and it’s so weird and wonderful. From the opening lines:
A woman walks down the street and a man tells her to smile. When she smiles, she reveals a mouthful of fangs. She bites off the man’s hand, cracks the bones and spits them out, and accidentally swallows his wedding ring, which gives her indigestion.
… it’s clear that nothing here is normal, although yes, the story is about things that happen a lot. Random men telling women to smile. Creepy dudes on subways exposing themselves. Male joggers following maybe a bit too closely. Unwanted comments about appearance. All those little moments that are really so common that every woman has experienced them in one way or another.
In this story, the author does an amazing job of portraying how fear of these moments pervades women’s lives, turning simple things like a walk from one’s car to the front door into something to plan and consider — and then shows how that might all turn around, given a few sci-fi-flavored twists.
This story is also available to read online via TinHouse.
Shit Cassandra Saw That She Didn’t Tell the Trojans Because At That Point Fuck Them Anyway: A short piece that’s just so well done, about all the things Cassandra could tell Trojans about, but:
She is tired of speaking to listening ears. The listening ears of the men who think her mad drive her to madness.
It ends on an oddly uplifting note, as Cassandra’s thoughts turn to all the things she wishes she could tell the women of Troy about too, things that would make them happy if they only knew.
And briefly:
Scene in a Public Park at Dawn, 1892: About two women duelists, very short, but I really liked it.
There are other stories I liked too, and a few that kind of clunked, but overall, it’s a great collection, and I really enjoyed the variety of topics and styles. Many of the stories were previously published elsewhere; some are available through the original online sites were they appeared, and some are original to this collection.
Fun fact: I might never have stumbled across this book or thought twice about it until I happened to click on a link to a story on LitHub, motivated solely by the fact that the image for the article was a scene from Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, which is a movie that I love an irrational amount. Once I clicked through and read Gwen E. Kirby’s thoughts on the movie and how its “stabbiness” empowers the women in it, I was sold!
This sort of stylized violence, stabbiness if you will, emerges in my writing as a fascination with women from history who fight and with contemporary women who wish they could. Stabbiness makes me wonder how violence in these very specific contexts can feel affirming, even as violence is the thing being defied.
As I’ve mentioned countless times on this blog, I really don’t consider myself a short story reader, and I don’t typically have the patience to read an entire book of stories. With Shit Cassandra Saw, I took a slower approach, reading just one or two stories per day, and found the entire experience really enjoyable. I’m glad I took the time to appreciate this book. If you like your stories on the weird side with a strong feminist theme throughout, check out this collection!
Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.
Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.
Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!
Title: The Deadly Hours Author: Susanna Kearsley, C. S. Harris, Anna Lee Huber, Christine Trent Published: 2020 Length: 352 pages
What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):
A stellar line-up of historical mystery novelists weaves the tale of a priceless and cursed gold watch as it passes through time wreaking havoc from one owner to another. The characters are irrevocably linked by fate, each playing a key role in breaking the curse and destroying the watch once and for all.
From 1733 Italy to Edinburgh in 1831 to a series of chilling murders in 1870 London, and a lethal game of revenge decades later, the watch touches lives with misfortune, until it comes into the reach of one young woman who might be able to stop it for good.
How and when I got it:
I picked up a paperback copy as soon as it was released, back in 2020.
Why I want to read it:
Basically, as soon as I heard that there was a book being released that included Susanna Kearsley as one of the authors, I knew I had to have it.
Susanna Kearsley is one of my go-to favorite authors, and I haven’t regretted reading (or buying) a single one of her books yet! And while I haven’t read anything by the other authors who contributed to this book, I’ve heard good things about all of them.
As for the book itself, I like the sound of interconnected stories focusing on a watch that gets handed down through generations, and I’m curious about the curse, what it is, and how it might be broken. Plus, I’d love to see how the four different authors’ pieces work together, and whether it feels like one coherent whole.
Title: Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town Author: Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Publisher: Random House/Wendy Lamb Books Publication date: April 20, 2021 Length: 208 pages Genre: Young adult – short stories Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
A lyrical and heartfelt collection by an award-winning writer that connects the lives of young people from small towns in Alaska and the American west. Each story is unique, yet universal.
In this book, the impact of wildfire, a wayward priest, or a mysterious disappearance ricochet across communities, threading through stories. Here, ordinary actions such as ice skating or going to church reveal hidden truths. One choice threatens a lifelong friendship. Siblings save each other. Rescue and second chances are possible, and so is revenge.
On the surface, it seems that nothing ever happens in these towns. But Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock shows that underneath that surface, teenagers’ lives blaze with fury, with secrets, and with love so strong it burns a path to the future.
In this collection of interconnected short stories, a varied group of teen characters each face the challenges and rewards of small-town life. Through ordinary events, showing brief moments in the characters’ lives, we see their inner struggles, how they deal with pain or boredom or being left behind, and how they find new paths and moments of healing.
Set in the mid-1990s, the stories are set in Alaska and in small towns scattered across the American west. We meet hitchhikers, kids with reputations, girls who grew up wild and free, siblings who’ve suffered loss. Some common threads are apparent across multiple stories — the early warnings of a wildfire in one story turn into an out-of-control inferno in another; the aftermath of certain events are sprinkled throughout several characters’ lives, but we only get the full picture in a seemingly unrelated story later on.
I loved seeing the way the characters’ lives intersect and have impacts big and small on other characters’ lives, even when there’s no obvious connection. In fact, these characters for the most part will never know the threads that connect them, even though we as readers are treated to the bigger picture and have the pleasure of seeing where all theses lives overlap.
The author’s first novel, The Smell of Other People’s Houses, is one of my favorite books, and is a must-read. In Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town, we’re once again treated to her simple yet affecting approach to language, the realistic-feeling dialogue, and the tour of the inner workings of teen minds and hearts.
I wouldn’t normally be drawn to a short story collection, but I picked this one up because of the author, and I’m so glad I did. It’s a slim, lovely book, and I’m sure I’ll read it again to gain new appreciation now that I know how the very different pieces all fit together.
Highly recommended.
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