Competent craft and great narration, but in many of the stories I couldn’t help but feel an element of contrivance injected into it for no discernible reason, which, because they are so short, was enough to turn off my suspension of disbelief. Even with the small knowledge of the characters I would feel like it was an odd thing for them to have done, which perhaps is a hallmark of the author; I’ve only read one other book by them, I think.

You’d think with so little information you would be able to roll with whatever decisions and reactions a character has, but it had the opposite effect on me. It’s true that my short story “muscles” are basically atrophied next to the amount of thought and volume of content I’ve consumed for long form work, though. So it may well be a “me” problem.