Lily King is a great writer. But this collection of short stories was not as interesting or compelling as her novels.

I am usually not a fan of short stories, but each one of Lily Kings are so fully realised they are like perfect entities on their own. Her writing is so evocative of emotions like shame, you feel along with the characters.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am a huge fan of everything Lily King does and this is no exception. I have a soft spot for short story collections and I knew that each one was going to be special, and I was right. From stories about growing up as a girl in a world that sees you as anything but a person to small-town conflicts that made me nostalgic for my own summers in Vermont to family sagas, this collection was flawless. So much so that I will be making sure to buy it in hardback for myself and anyone who will take a copy from me.

5 stars.

I love short story collections, but this one didn't do anything for me. I guess I didn't care for the writing style. Lily King's prose was very confusing and clunky. I'm shocked that so many people love her writing. None of the stories were memorable or impactful. Very boring and repetitive.

Really really loved this collection of shorts from Lily King!! My second venture into her literature and she has such a meaningful way of connecting with her characters.

This is a diverse group of beautifully written and compelling short stories. Each one brings out strong emotions by examining a different type of relationship and life stages and although every tale is brief, King creates a full narrative, using ever word to inject color and feeling into the story. Her writing really is sublime.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for the copy to review.

A well-written, interesting collection of short stories which really bring the characters to life. My favorite was probably the story about the young teenage boy whose parents leave him home for the summer with two college kids; my least favorite was the last story in the collection which was too surreal and presumably metaphorical for my taste.

This was my second Lily King book after Writers & Lovers and I’ll definitely be checking out more of her books as well, she’s an excellent writer.

The writing I loved by King in Writers & Lovers may not transfer to short form, but some of that is also me always wishing a short story was longer. Still, I feel like King writes on a winding road around and when that road is stopped in the middle, the end is left feeling undone.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

A collection of short stories by the ever entertaining Lily King. All the stories were exceptionally written but I was drawn to the story, Five Tuesday’s in Winter which dealt with love and loss and starting over. It was sweet and heartwarming. I also enjoyed When in the Dordogne and North Sea for similar reasons. Each story deals with everyday life events events whose characters are a little broken in some way. Beautifully written and a must read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love Lily King and I was eager to read her short story collection. I found the selection of stories surrounding love of all forms to be really moving.
Some stand outs-
I loved the title story, about a grumpy bookseller and his daughter. “When in the Dordogne” was a really wonderful coming of age story.
“Creature” was compelling and hard to look away from, about a teenager who took a live-in nanny job over the summer.


There were a few stories that I wasn’t as interested in, but I still found the range really intriguing.

Thank you for the e-galley via NetGalley.

A collection of short stories and each and everyone of them was brilliant to read. The writing is exceptional and the characters in each story believable.

A wonderful collection of emotional and memorable short stories, beautifully told about the everyday and the ordinary. I loved it,

I enjoyed pretty much every story in this collection. Lily King excels at writing raw emotion and about every day lives of complex characters and this really shines through in her debut short story collection. I loved the abrupt endings that left space for the reader to interpret & how emotion was the undercurrents of these stories driving the narrative rather than just the narrative of the story itself. Lily king is 2/2 for me, gonna have to start digging into her backlist.

Lily king is an auto read author for me. I usually can’t stick with short stories, but I really enjoyed these. I still think a full length novel is where King shines but these were memorable and powerful while being short!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the Kindle Arc. I read Lily King's Writers and Lovers this year and enjoyed it very much. I was thrilled when I was granted a galley of Five Tuesdays in Winter. This is a book of ten of the best short stories I've read in a long, long time. I don't read short stories as often as I probably should but if more books of these stories were like this one, I probably would. Ms. King's writing is fiction but it feels so real. This is her first book of short stories and I have yet to read Euphoria but I will make that a priority. The stories are ones that I will think about for a long time and possible read again in the future.

Perhaps I enjoyed Writers & Lovers so much that my anticipation for other Lily King works is extremely high. This is just okay for me. These stories seemed to be going for the shock factor, rather than a short story that comes together in the end and makes sense. These were not those. There were glimmers of that gorgeous writing, yet the content of the stories was harsh and at times disturbing.

Writers & Lovers is a favorite so I was excited when I heard Lily King had a new release for this year. Like any collection of short stories, some were hits and some were just ok, but I think as a whole this was very strong. They all dealt with some form of love, whether it be lust, unrequited love, toxic love, etc. my favorite stories were Five Tuesdays in Winter, When in the Dordogne, and Mansard.

In Lily King's new story collection, she turns her eye for detail and for wonderfully faulted characters on explorations of love, desire, loss, and tragedy.

From a bookseller closed off emotionally from the world who begins to consider letting someone in again to the complicated, tragic reunion of former college roommates; from a mourning elderly man faced with disaster to a writer who has been silenced for too long, King mines uncomfortable or joyful, sometimes tiny moments that shape her characters' lives in profound ways.

With masterful storytelling, King builds a world within each short story that feels immediate, sometimes poignant, and which repeatedly surprised me with the amount of heart involved.

Lily King is also the author of Writers & Lovers and Euphoria.

I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Grove Atlantic and NetGalley.

Lily King's "Writers & Lovers" was one of my favorite books of 2020, so I had high expectations for "Five Tuesdays in Winter," her new short story collection, and I wasn't disappointed. King brings the same beautiful writing and sharp emotional insight into love and loss to these ten pieces--reading them is to be stopped short over and over with the piercing recognition that yes, that's exactly what any number of circumstances feel like. As with most collections, not every story worked equally well ("Mansard" was a miss for me), but "Creature," a coming-of-age tale about a 14-year-old babysitter grappling with romantic feelings for her employer's visiting son, and "When in the Dordogne," about a lonely boy who spends a transformative summer in the care of two college students, were standouts that alone would be worth the price of the book. Essential reading for King fans and a great introduction to her work for newcomers.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

A wonderful collection of short stories by a talented writer. Each story gives just enough information to make the reader involved and invested. Motherhood, marriage, childhood are all topics that are handled gently and realistically. Lily King is a writer who does not disappoint.