These were so good! As with all short story collections there were a few that didn't grab me but I read all of them (which is better than most short story collections I've read lol) and enjoyed all but one or two! Heiny's writing style is so up my alley and even when you think you can tell what's going to happen or the plot she often takes it in a direction you didn't totally expect. Can't wait to read more!

Games and Rituals is a new book of short stories by Katherine Heiny, the author of Early Morning Riser. Each one of these tales is a smartly-written story about love in one of its forms; the characters are flawed and real and relatable.

“Chicken-Flavored and Lemon-Scented” is a story about the interior lives and desires of driving examiners. In “Damascus,” a mother fears that her son is repeating her own bad decisions, only to learn that he is twice as responsible as she is. In “Twist and Shout,” a daughter wrestles with conflicting feelings of annoyance and sorrow for her conservative, aging father who mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid as a cashew and eats it. “Some people say time is like a river, but it’s really much more like an accordion, constantly squeezing you back to high school,” the main character thinks, as she gets drunker and drunker along with several other stranded strangers in the airport bar one night as they wait for their delayed flights in “Sky Bar.”

An entire world is captured in each of these stories, the characters and situations so fully realized. This is a wonderful book of short stories that will touch a nerve and stay with you for some time to come.

Thank you to the publisher, @NetGalley and @KatherineHeiny for an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Katherine Heiny's writing is simply the best. Every story made me feel more human, made me crack up and tear up, put me back in touch with all of my past selves. This collection is a treat—buy a copy for yourself, your sister, your mom, your best pal, the coworker you're trying to impress. All hits, no skips!

Such an interesting exploration of the challenging but beautiful parts of loving one another. Some stories were stronger than others (the story of a wife purging and a husband trying to keep up with their shifting relationship particularly stood out to me), but really enjoyed this collection as a whole.

I love Katherine Heinys writing style, her characters are always very relatable and endearing. The only criticism I have is that it was only short stories and I wanted to keep on reading more about all of the characters and their lives.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Games and Rituals is pitched as a collection of “glittering stories of love” that portray the song-and-dance routine of what it means to be connected to other people, and contains 11 short stories with an eclectic cast of characters and the loved ones they’re entangled with, among them: a restless DMV road test examiner, a husband whose wife takes KonMari too far, a woman whose father swallows his very expensive hearing aid, a woman who’s drafted into helping her husband’s ex-wife move…

What I loved: the premises were so promising, and there were a handful of standouts - “561”, “Damascus”, “Games and Rituals”, and “Twist and Shout” were personal favorites. I love specificity, especially when it comes to quirks, which each story had in abundance. Heiny’s strength shines in how she paints such intimate and intricate close-up views of the characters and their relationships, both in what they say and do and what they don’t say and do.

The big “but” for me: in nearly every narrative, I feel like the author pulls away just as we’re leaning in. Used sparingly, I enjoy a strategically cut short story; used in nearly every title, it’s frustrating. Usually, short story collections bring me out of a reading slump, but this one was hard to finish when story after story felt unresolved.

Nonetheless, the stories were fun and touching while they lasted. I’m new to Katherine Heiny, so despite the stories of Games and Rituals feeling unfinished, I still enjoyed her writing style and would definitely give her longform fiction a try. Thank you NetGalley and Alfred A Knopf for the digital advanced reader copy!

I usually love essay style books but this one did not hook me. I felt the stories were a little too long, not very entertaining, and I wish they had been a little more connected. However, there were a few stories that I enjoyed in this book, including Damascus, Games and Rituals, and CobRa. I enjoyed these few so much that it redeemed this book for me!

These stories are often laugh out loud funny and the writing is crystalline. Most of them left me smirking and they felt perfectly contained, like a collection of palate cleansers.

I loved this collection of short stories! It felt unified and fresh, and the title was perfectly reflected in all of the stories. Katherine Heiny did a fantastic job creating fully developed characters, which can be so difficulty in the short story form. I'll absolutely be picking up a final copy of this book as well as reading her backlist!

Katherine Heiny is the QUEEN of a quiet character study and her style works so well for a short story collection. Every story completely drew me in and immersed me into someone else's thoughts, feelings, and situation. I had to take a breather after each story because I had to adjust to coming out of someone else's worldview! The characters she has written are beautiful and complicated. I highly recommend!

This is a book full of stories about people we have to be around those we choose to be around in those we’re forced to be around they have a story about a DMV worker and her coworkers a mother worried about her son doing drugs a daughter worried about her dad a woman’s relationship with her ex and on and on I thought all the stories were great even though I kind a dead like the first story I found it a little bit boring the rest were all great and I found this a book I couldn’t wait to finish and look forward to those free moments I had to read more. I don’t think I have ever read a book by this author before but I would definitely be down to read more from her as far as anthologies go I would say this is one of the better ones is 99% of the stories were great I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind to dictate my review.

Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny is a fun, comical, yet a little dark and edgy short story collection that you don’t want to miss. I gotta say - I have a love/hate relationship with short stories. I think it’s because I love slow-moving, character-driven stories SO much, and tend to feel cheated when the story ends so quickly. I just want more time with the character, is all. It feels like a punch to the gut when I’m just getting to know the character, making a connection, and then boom - it’s all over. For that reason alone, I don’t pick up short story collections very often. But I loved Heiny’s last novel, Early Morning Riser so, so, SO much, that I just couldn’t pass this one up. I’m glad that I read it because it was a lot of fun. Some stories I enjoyed more than others, but for the most part, they were all super entertaining. I chuckled multiple times as the author explored the ups and downs of modern domestic life through the eyes of some quirky, witty, and charming characters. If you’re looking for a fresh, humorous, and current take on topics like friendship, motherhood, marriage, and family life, this is definitely it! Games and Rituals is out next week - April 18th!

“The beloved author of Early Morning Riser brings us eleven glittering stories of love--friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts--in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime.” (GoodReads)

I’m grateful my friend Robin put this fun, sweet, bittersweet, funny, sad, lovely collection of short stories on my radar! So often, short stories leave me wanting more, but each of these felt complete: an entire novel worth of emotion in just a few pages. My favorite was CoBra, about a wife going down the KonMari Rabbit Hole and her husband’s concern. “William had begun to worry that he no longer sparked joy in his wife and that she would give him to Goodwill.”

I will definitely be looking for more by this author!

Thanks, NetGalley and Knopf, for a Digital Review Copy. US Pub Date: 18 Apr 23

The stories weren't bad, they just weren't great either. I underlined some passages but I don't think I'll remember them, or anything else about this book, in a week.

Really loved this collection of short stories. For me, it’s all about how our habit and the games we play on a daily basis shape our lives and relationships. The author uses unique situations and characters that you simply have to relate to on some levels.

She also changes the narrative styles to best match the stories and their meaning / messages, which I found very great and entertaining.

This is a medium paced collection that I recommend to everyone, but especially if some of you never read short stories and don’t know where to start. Because the style is super accessible and there is not one story I didn’t like in the bunch.

The first story was about driving examiners and the details of their work life were quite interesting to know, especially how they divided the clients among themselves. The story also had an unexpected twist towards the end.

The second story explored a mother-son relationship discussing how generations don’t emulate each other but just switch between roles of a caretaker. It was a sweet story.

The third one explores the perils of taking care of your old and now-alone father.

Turn Back, Turn Back was another interesting one from the POV of a wife and mother whose husband took care of their girls in the day but was actually having an affair.

The titular story failed to impress, as it was a lovers’ story who play different conversational games with each other.

Cobra, so far my favorite, was such a sweet story about a married couple in their mid-life and the infinite, unending love they share. The title was hilarious by the way.

A married Charlie helps relocate her husband’s ex-wife who also happened to volunteer as a helpline counselor with her.

Pandemic Behaviour is set during the pandemic and speaks of how roommates became everything at the time, and how doctor-patient appointments were conducted.

Bridesmaid, Revisited sees Marlee wear her bridesmaid dress to the office one day and initially welcomes the attention but then regrets her decision. She had worn that dress as a bridesmaid to a particularly cling friend whom she did not like much and in the end, she ends up regretting her behavior towards the friend.

King Midas has a married man Oscar who is deeply hopelessly in love or so it seems with his girlfriend/mistress Tessa. But for Tessa, a wedding photographer, the attention and affection are not new.

Sky Bar sees Fawn at the airport waiting for her flight which gets canceled due to inclement weather. She makes new acquaintances while waiting there and tries to avoid her ex who is waiting for her and wants to meet her earnestly.

This was my first book by Katherine Heiny and I am definitely looking forward to reading more from her. Overall I enjoyed reading most of the stories. Although the context and characters of the stories seemed very real, I enjoyed the slightly unhinged characters allotted to each of the stories. The deeper meaning in the seemingly simple stories was a treat to read.

I think most readers will enjoy at least a few stories in this book.

Short story collections usually inspire in me a mixture of awe and dread. Awe, because good story collections are powerful and beautifully-written. Dread, because they are frequently slow, difficult, and depressing to read.

But Games and Rituals is a rare, wonderful exception: it is powerful and beautifully-written, and there is no shortage of serious subject matter (loneliness, divorce, aging, death). But it is also *fun*.

The stand-out story, in my opinion, is Twist and Shout, which is about a woman who goes home to care for her aging, difficult father. It manages to be somehow simultaneously evocative, wrenching, and laugh-out-loud funny. This one story is worth reading the whole book for, and several others are almost as good.

I loved reading this collection of short stories. Although short, each story had me fully immersed into the lives of our characters performing a game/ritual in the vein of love. I’d say this was one of my fave short story collections to date, and that’s a testimony to Katherine’s writing style. My fave stories include: Turn Back, Turn Back; Pandemic Behaviour; Bridesmaid, Revisited; and Games and Rituals.

Katherine Heiny is one of my favorites. I found her when a friend gifted me Single, Carefree, Mellow a collection of funny stories of young women's hijinks. I went on to love her two novels.

This collection, Games and Rituals, has a lot of what I loved about Single, Carefree, Mellow. The women hew older and while still funny, I didn't love the collection as much as I loved her other three books. Still, wholeheartedly recommend Katherine Heiny but suggest starting with any of her other books.

I received an advance copy of this e-book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

4/5 stars

this short story collection was so beautifully written and had me turning every page for more! the writing was witty and captivating and I felt like it captured the core essence of just being a human and navigating different life situations so perfectly. as with any short story collection, there were some stories that I enjoyed more than others, but overall I would really recommend this to anyone who's looking to get into short stories! I love that these stories covered situations that felt unique and wonderfully mundane, making it all the more entrancing. the characters all felt well-developed and alive, despite only being contained within the confines of their respective story.

absolutely loved this!!! definitely recommend