I tried to figure out what these stories shared in common, or what origins the title alludes to, but I couldn't. The themes that I noticed and found interesting had to do loosely with beauty standards, or with what it is to be a woman. I enjoyed the stories individually, but they blended together, despite their being quite separate. Some were about marriage, some affairs, some parent-child, some friendships; all very nuanced and in-the-head. My favorite was the one I found the funniest, Love Not, about a teenage boy's misguided failure of a crush on a friend of his mom's.

A great line I laughed at was "He thought he might throw up she was so appealing." Especially because of what it was in reference to: "She was wearing sticky orange lipstick and her teeth, misaligned, made a clicking sound like sifting ashes." Then there were others that didn't work for me, like "...she had eaten in those establishments on other streets like these with power lines like wet hair caught in a comb's teeth and black gas station gallon numbers against a white board like a theater marquee advertising the cost of living."

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

I tried to like this book, and got a bit more than halfway through, but unfortunately it ended up being a DNF for me. I hate not finishing books, but I just couldn't get into many of the stories.