“She is fascinated by how much romantic love can soften a hard life, highlight the best of you, not condemn the worst of you.”

As with most collections of stories, I find this hard to rate because I really enjoyed some of the stories and others... less so. Which is why I usually end up with a three star rating.

This one particularly, I feel a bit conflicted on. I really appreciated the new life that was breathed into some of these stories and genuinely enjoyed seeing the twists the author made, but I also couldn't ignore my second-hand embarrassment at a lot of the stories (the relationships and dialogue often felt awkward and stilted) or the characters that seemed to be walking romcom stereotypes. It sometimes felt like I was reading an adult novelization of a horse movie from the early 2000s, with the way the characters were speaking.

All in all, the things I liked and disliked are kind of split evenly down the middle, so to a three stars it goes.