A Manual for How to Love Us is a beautiful short story collection with themes of womanhood, grief, identity, and isolation. Each piece was full of meaningful allegory and creative storytelling.

The earlier stories in the collection really blew me away - the first half had stellar stories including "You Too Can Cure Your Life" and "We Were Wolves." The author did a great job of developing characters quickly and giving us empathy for them, even the characters who were messy and broken. Near the end, "Nest" and "Coast" really blew me away. There were moments of heartbreak in each, and wonderful representations of emotion, grief, and hardship.

There were a few short stories that lost me and I had a harder time getting through. I felt as though they had thoughtful messages beneath the surface, too, but sometimes I just couldn't fully get what it was going for.

Overall, this is a beautiful complication of stories that all reflect similar feelings and themes. Even though they are all different, they flow well into one another and give you a lot to reflect on about life, love, and relationships.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and HarperCollins for the eARC. I will share my review on social media platforms as the pub day approaches!

Such an amazing collection of short stories. Usually with short story collections there are some that just don't resonate with me at all, but I really enjoyed every single story. I don't know if I could even choose a favorite.

Anywhere - 5/5
You Too Can Cure Your Life - 3.5/5
The Box - 5/5
We Were Wolves -4/5
The Dragging Route - 4/5
Watching Boys Do Things - 4/5

A Manual for How to Love Us - 5/5

Burrowing - 5/5
Nest - 4/5
The Forgotten Coast - 4/5
Crescendo - 4/5
Instructions for Assembly - 5/5
Elsewhere - 5/5

Thanks so much to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the advanced review copy!

A MANUAL FOR HOW TO LOVE US is highly recommended for fans of literary fiction and short story collections.

Haunting but never claustrophobic, this linked collection explores how women make their way in a broken world. Exploring themes of grief, loss, and control the author shifts between the realistic and the speculative. These women are trying their best to survive (if not to heal).

The American South is evocatively rendered and the writing is sophisticated and complex.

Every collection of short stories has some level of unevenness, and I think it goes without saying that despite each story in this one feeling purposeful (nothing felt like a throwaway or strange addition), there were inevitably some stories here that more or less lost me (not necessarily the fault of the story itself, of course). The heights, though, are supremely high. The first three stories of the collection are incredible, with The Box perhaps being my favorite of the bunch, and the final story also stood out to me, closing out the collection with the necessary impact. The stories are often filled to the brim with empathy, one example being the second story, You Too Can Cure Your Life, which centers around an alternative medicine grifter and her cancer-diagnosed client. While the story clearly isn't forgiving of the pseudoscience culture it describes (and in fact highlights the immense damage it causes in a particularly tragic fashion), it still seeks to understand what would push a woman into that position and has some level of sympathy in that regard for both involved. The last story also feels particularly gentle in its empathy, with characters telling stories to each other in an almost matter-of-fact manner that isn't treated with any particular moral value by the narration. Events and backstories and trauma are what they are.

The collection as a whole feels cohesive and deals with threads of connecting themes while not feeling remotely repetitive, with a great variety of stories being told through a great variety of voices. It's clearly very purposeful in its construction and worthy of a cover-to-cover read in the intended order, which is split into three parts, the second of which merely consists of the story that lends its title to the collection (and what a great title that is).