3/5 stars Mixed Bag Short Story Collection
Summary:
The stories range a bit in genre from zombie apocalypse to family drama to futuristic scifi to suspense to flat out horror. It’s a little hard to judge something like this on the whole. There are stories in here I absolutely loved, like the one with the 12 year old boy and the baby. On the flip side, there are some stories in here that are so disturbing that I can’t even recommend the book on a clean mailing list.
Additional Comments:
– Most of the stories have some sort of circular logic, a twist at the end that makes it wrap up nicely given previous events. That makes them cool but somewhat predictable.
– I can’t remember every detail right now, but I guess it followed a standard bell curve. 2-3 stories really impressed me in every sense, most didn’t move me one way or the other, and 2-3 either annoyed me or brought out some other negative emotion.
– Content warning: Adult content. There’s one story in particular where the plot involves teenagers getting into the porn industry. Very strong language. Several stories dropped unnecessary f-bombs. (There were about 5-7 throughout the book, maybe 1 was necessary to move the plot forward.)
– I heard the audio version. It was decently narrated.
– There’s a note at the end of the audiobook that bothered me because it came across as arrogant. It said something like “if you enjoyed this, please consider leaving a review …” (that’s standard and totally acceptable, but then it went on…I’m paraphrasing here.) “If you didn’t like it, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you don’t know how to have fun.” I get that it was meant to be funny, but it’s way more abrasive than it should be. People being people, at best you get a chuckle or two but at what cost?
Conclusion:
It’s a very mixed short story collection. Some are worth reading, and some are not. This book will not be on the Audiobook Edge list, but I’m starting to believe that I should just post all opinions and let people decide for themselves what they spend their time on.
Associate links to follow…
Amazon Prime
Audible – If you’d like some free codes, please email me at [email protected] with requests for any of my works.
