Let me say up front that I am a very fast reader. I have been since I was a kid. This is especially true of books that I’m excited about, and I have been very excited to read this particular book for months.

It’s 277 pages long. I finished it in an hour and a half. And then, after feeling utterly bereft for a moment, I went back and read it again.

Y’all, this anthology is excellent.

It’s rare to read a collection of stories that doesn’t have a few duds in it as far as the reader is concerned. It’s definitely rare for me, at least, though most of the stories I consider duds tend to be ones in which I can still recognize merit despite them not appealing to me personally.

There are a few lines in some of the pieces that are a little heavy-handed, but those stories aren’t diminished because of that. Rather, those lines feel like a personal revelation to the character in question instead of an unsubtle attempt to shove the point directly at the reader, so they’re entirely forgivable as well as being few and far between.

The women and girls in these stories feel so real and their stories so very affecting. While reading, I felt like I knew them. I definitely know women like them, and I’m sure you do as well. Watching them overcome the odds and the obstacles in these stories often feels like a personal victory; watching them bend and break and shatter, deeply heart-breaking. Both endings, the gratifying and the grim, feel cathartic and communal somehow in their tragic universality. 

The men feel pretty realistic, too, I should say. They’re not all villains–there are also a few eternally loving fathers and grief-stricken husbands. But the villains are there, and while some of them are almost (but not quite) comically slimy and awful, there are others who are more low-key–who seem sensible if not a little pathetic, or negligent in lieu of being violently abusive. Those who don’t actively participate in violent misogyny, but who ignore it or rationalize it away. They’re the ones that genuinely frightened me while reading this anthology, because most of us know those guys, too.

All that to say, every story in this anthology is engaging and thought-provoking. Some are painfully funny while others are downright soul-crushing, and while a few of them are hopelessly bleak, those are offset by viciously triumphant tales of justice and vengeance.

My personal favorites, though it was extraordinarily difficult to pick: "Better" by Alexis DuBon, "Youngblood" by Lindz McLeod, "What Doesn't Kill You," by Elle Turpitt, "Underground" by Regi Caldart, "Last Night I Was Having a Drink at the Slipper Nipple" by Amanda Michele, "The Eyes of Vaz'lul" by Jill Palmer, "The Canary" by Joanne Askew, and "The Cooper Girl" by S.H. Cooper.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Rating: A+

Review by Kayla Martin-Gant

Twitter: @poultryofperil 

Instagram: @kmartingant 

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review consideration.