I often say my biggest issue with short stories is when they just end, and that’s how I felt about most of these stories. Of course, every story must end, but for me the measure of an unsatisfying story is when it ends unexpectedly and I’m left unsure about what to do with what I’ve just read. This collection unfortunately felt like a chore to read, and only a few of the stories felt memorable and left me at all excited to keep chewing on them.

My genre preferences keep me gravitating much more towards speculative short stories than this collection’s sort of contemporary/literary stories, which in this case all focus on Black men or boys of all different ages in New York City. I thought I was getting better at reading this genre after several stunners in a row, but this one made me feel a little bit like I was back at square one. It was clearly very well written, and I’m sure these stories will land better with others than they did with me though, so don’t let this review dissuade you from checking it out.