Boys and Girls Like You and Me: Stories

by Aryn Kyle

ARYN KYLE, whose award-winning novel The God of Animals was hailed as "reason for readers to rejoice" (USA Today), turns her gift for storytelling to the lives of girls and women in this spectacular collection. These eleven stories showcase Kyle’s keen eye for character, her humor, and her uncanny grasp of the loneliness, selfishness, and longing that underlie female experience. In "Nine," a young girl given to exaggeration escapes a humiliating ninth birthday celebration with the help of her father’s new girlfriend. The dubious benefits of sleeping with one’s boss are revealed when a bookstore manager defends an employee from an irate customer in the hilarious "Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore." A raid on a neighbor’s meth lab strengthens the unlikely friendship between a solitary woman and a Goth teenage girl in "Boys and Girls Like You and Me." And in a notable exception to the rule, "Captain’s Club" features a boy whose devotion to a lonely woman transforms his cruise vacation.

In moments electric with sudden harmony or ruthless indifference, the girls and women in this collection provoke, beguile, and entertain. Writing with remarkable tenderness and wisdom, Kyle gives us a collection radiant with bittersweet revelations and startling insights, and secures her reputation as a major young talent.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection, Anthologies, Contemporary, American

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 20, 2010

About the author

Aryn Kyle graduated from the University of Montana writing program. In 2004 her short story Foaling Season, now the first chapter of this novel, won a National Magazine Award for Fiction for The Atlantic Monthly. Kyle spent most of her childhood in Grand Junction, Colorado, and now lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short story collection about women and girls depicting the female experience in a raw and brilliant way. The characters in these stories isn't always very likeable but they feel real and everyone is flawed. Liked that the characters wasn't cookie cutter butter sweet characters but where deeply realistic and raw in their own uniqe way. I'm not much for short stories collection but this one just worked for me!

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t usually care much for short stories; I don’t understand them most of the time, and so they bore me. This collection is different. It grabbed me from the first paragraph and never let go. In each of these eleven stories about young women and girls (and one young boy), I recognized either myself or people I know. There are many, many ways that a woman can mess up her life, and several of these ways are brought to living, breathing, despairing life in these tales. It’s uncanny how vivid these short tales are, despite dealing with the mundane situations of life.

Affairs with married men, trying too hard to be accepted, allowing a betrayal to ruin one’s life, compulsive lies- they’re all here, bad choices aplenty. In all these stories, you have the feeling that these lives could have reached dead ends, but you keep hoping for these people. Each story *does* end with the possibility that these lives can be turned around. These are stories about women and girls, but it’s not chick lit.

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well that was a bit of a disappointment. Not because I expected something spectacular, but after the strong start this really just fell behind. It's like that kid who shoots out of the starting blocks at a track and field meet but burns themselves out like, 20 seconds in. At no point did Kyle's quality of writing falter - it was the stories themselves that just weren't that interesting, honestly.

As always, you can find a summarizing thought about each of the 11 stories included in this collection below:

"Brides" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

WOOF. The scene were the teacher instructs the male student "not to let her pass?" I actually gasped out loud as some pieces fell into place and just the savagery of it. This story was quietly dangerous and super layered without trying too hard. A very strong showing for the first story in this collection

"Nine" ⭐⭐⭐

Interesting character development, but a lacklustre sequence of events.

"Economics" ⭐⭐

We are heading downhill fast. There was really nothing to latch onto here.

"Sex Scenes From a Chain Bookstore" ⭐⭐

Give me strength. Besides the book retail character<>sales associate interactions (which were spot. on this one had nothing going for it.

"Captain's Club" ⭐⭐

The terrible 2s continue. The ending just didn't make sense to me with this one - like, Tommy's fine at the end because he saw a blood moon? How does that solve all his problems? I feel like Kyle opened some really intricate relationships in this one that just didn't evolve or resolve.

"A Lot Like Fun" ⭐⭐

The protagonist was super unlikeable and nothing happens. The saving grace (and really the reason that this was a 2 star and not a 1 star story) was this perfect description of enrichment in schools:

She had been a gifted kid herself once, had taken the special test and been put in the special class that met three times a week in the Resource Room. [...] She was going to have a remarkable life, they told her, filled with remarkable things. In the end, though, the special class was anything but. They met when all the nongifted students were having math class and spent their time drawing pictures of spaceships and writing their own political satires. By the time the year was over, the only difference she could find between herself and the nongifted students was that they had learned fractions and she had not.

I feel that all SO ACUTELY. Spot on.

"Company of Strangers" ⭐⭐

I didn't understand the dynamics between the characters - murky at best.

"Take Care" ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A brief little shoot up into the upper range of star ratings with this one. In simple terms, it was intriguing. Not game changing in any way, but significantly more interesting than most of the stories included here (and who knows, maybe that's why it's 4 stars - could be a reactionary spike as opposed to an authentic rating).

"Femme" ⭐⭐

Meh. This tried to be something interesting and it just wasn't.

"Allegiance" ⭐⭐⭐

My heart literally hurt reading about Leora's hardships at school. Like, actually clutched my pearls and tried to ride out the heartache I was feeling. Nothing hurt more than her crying, scrabbling around in the dirt trying to find a lost button so that she could go to the birthday party of a girl planning to torment her. Crying because she had bought the girl a gift already and wanted to give it to her, because she was never invited to parties. Like, UGH. WHY ARE KIDS SO MEAN TO EACH OTHER?

I would have preferred that Glynnis be the only focus of the plot, though. Her parents' drama didn't add anything for me.

"Boys and Girls Like You and Me" ⭐⭐

There's nothing even to say about this. Once again, just a boring story that didn't go anywhere and had nothing going on.

[Greta Samuelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up to 3
Aryn Kyle’s writing is very well done.
The stories themselves in this collection were what I didn’t enjoy.
They were all so depressing - I feel like I should go see a counselor after reading them.

For me, reading is a pleasurable activity. The stories of the women and girls in this book were not my thing.

[Kaci Pelias · Rating 4 out of 5]

these characters were all so heartwrenchingly real and beautiful!!!

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend Terri wrote a scathing review of this book, and it acted on me like the classic spoiled milk skit: "Ugh, it's terrible! Here, taste it!" I was perversely curious, and after noticing that other reviews of the book seemed wildly polarized -- love it/hate it, not much inbetween -- I was downright intrigued.

I'm in the "love it" camp. I thought it was sharply observed, with snappy, vivid dialog. It's frequently very funny (if in a sometimes uncomfortably dark or "OMG that's SO inappropriate!" sort of way). I was reminded in various ways of other modern writers I like whose characters often make selfish and/or dangerous choices: Erich Puchner, Mary Gaitskill, Wells Tower, Sara Levine, Charlie Houston, and (perhaps especially) Lena Dunham. I can't completely dispute Terri's criticism that Kyle's characters

have just given in to the worst of life in a defeatist way. They can't get over anything, they can't make anything of themselves, they are defined by their victimhood, they choose debasement, they are spiteful.

but it does seem a bit reductive. And if it describes the characters as they are seen in these stories, there are some indications that the characters don't necessarily stay that way. They're mostly college-aged, and maybe they'll grow up a bit. But if they're awful until they do, I found them awfully entertaining.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book while perusing the new books section of my local library. I was in the mood to try reading a book of short stories rather than a full-length novel.

It's hard for me to rate this book. On the one hand, Kyle's writing is fantastic. I left the end of each 20-30 page story thinking, "Not only do I feel I have a good understanding of the character, but I feel I have a good idea of where the character is going to end up even after the story ends. How is it possible to do this successfully with so few words?" On the other hand, as I read one story after another, I got a little depressed. The premise of this series of short stories are about women who are in the midst of making poor decisions or learning from past poor decisions. I felt depressed because not all of the leading characters were positively empowered, and I was saddened to see them go down paths of destruction or paths I wouldn't have taken myself if I were in their shoes. Looking back on it, it was likely not the best book for me to read at a time in my life where I want to be surrounded by powerful, confident women and avoid "drama" present in Kyle's characters' lives.

In summary, if you're looking for sharply written short stories from an up and coming author, Kyle won't let you down. However, if you're looking for uplifting stories, I would consider looking elsewhere.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

PROS
-- I like short stories b/c they force the author to boil the story down to the most essential scenes. I feel like I get their key points in a short space. Kyle did this well.
-- The writing was pretty good. Not beautiful, but well done. She had some really good moments where she framed a character's perspective in such a way that it felt new to me. I love when that happens.
-- She doesn't glamorize sin. These are not soap operas. They're more like "About Schmidt" - showing how bleak life is for someone people, especially those without a strong faith or supportive community.
-- In almost every story, I could trace the problems back to the unfaithfulness of someone the main character loved -- a parent who'd abandoned them (physically or emotionally), an unfaithful partner, etc. I appreciated that she showed what havoc that wreaked.

CONS
-- I disliked most of the characters in these stories.
-- I disliked most of the situations and many of the choices made in these stories.
-- I disliked the example these characters set for those who don't recognize them as anti-heroes (i.e. they wouldn't actually be good cautionary tales for teens).

So ultimately, I just can't recommend it.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not often that a short story writer can create characters that are multi-dimensional, real, and relateable in so few pages...Aryn Kyle is remarkably successful at doing just that. The characters that grace this set of stories are flawed, but convey a refreshing honesty & self-awareness that made for a good tale, even set amongst the most ordinary of circumstances. From the inside flap, " In "Nine," a young girl given to exaggeration escapes a humiliating ninth birthday celebration with the help of her father’s new girlfriend. The dubious benefits of sleeping with one’s boss are revealed when a bookstore manager defends an employee from an irate customer in the hilarious "Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore." A raid on a neighbor’s meth lab strengthens the unlikely friendship between a solitary woman and a Goth teenage girl in "Boys and Girls Like You and Me." And in a notable exception to the rule, "Captain’s Club" features a boy whose devotion to a lonely woman transforms his cruise vacation."

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stories here work for me: "Captains Club" and the title story, "Boys and Girls Like You and Me". I'd give "Captains Club" 3.5 or 4 stars and "Boys and Girls Like You and Me" 3 or 3.5. In the rest, most of the characters (mostly female), except some children who come out pretty well, are just awful, and not in particularly poignant or interesting ways. They seem to have just given in to the worst of life in a defeatist way. They can't get over anything, they can't make anything of themselves, they are defined by their victimhood, they choose debasement, they are spiteful. As a reader, rather than feeling bad for them or empathizing with them, I just felt polluted by their attitudes, their selfishness, their laziness.

[Allyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was just mean although the writing was very clever. Few of the characters are at all likable or sympathetic. They all are either pathetic, evil, cruel, twisted, or just uninteresting. While these are short stories, so not the same as a novel, I can't help thinking of Rachel Cusk's recent book which I also found to be inhabited by unlikable characters, but somehow not as distasteful as these were.
She really creates her characters so well, and I remember quite liking her novel The God of Animals.
While acknowledging her writing skills, I would not recommend this short story collection to anyone unless they are completely cynical, nasty, and revel in bad behavior.

[Janelle Weiner]

Good to the last sentence. And I wonder if Kyle would hate this, but I feel like there was a GIRLS-esqueness to these stories, written in a time before GIRLS existed. They're funny, twisted, inappropriate at times. The girls are drifting--not identity-seeking, but waiting for their identity to find *them*, which I think is a pretty great critique of the contemporary female experience, at least for those of a certain age.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This anthology of stories was just not for me. Even though the writing and characterization were good, I found that the stories were morose and in general made me feel uncomfortable due to the content. For example an implied rape scene, abuse, etc. Normally these don't bother me, but for some reason this author's writing got into my head. I had a yucky feeling in my stomach the entire time I was reading and was just glad this one was over. 2 stars.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings on this collection. Some of the stories are sharp and devastating, while others are just meh and feel overworked in that MFA-workshop way.

[Emiline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book of short

[Alison Abernethy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story's were hit or miss, some I really liked some I didn't.

[Matt Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m unofficially the head cheerleader for Aryn Kyle. The God of Animals is one of my favorite books, and I even read passages of it at my writing group. As an example of good writing in case you were wondering. But that’s the only book she’s published besides this short story collection in 2010. So while I impatiently wait for her to continue proving her awesome writing abilities, I decided I should at least finish what she’s had published. And I’m happy I finally did. Not quite as good as her novel, but it explores the same territory and brings up some new ideas.

This collection is about girls (in regards to maturity not age) reaching turning points that position them toward womanhood, all pretty sad and terrible events, and how that shift occurs and where it leaves these “Not a girl, not yet a woman” characters, as Britney Spears circa Crossroads would say if she read books. There’s nothing unique or bizarre about these stories. They’re all pretty normal events, but Kyle is a very good writer. Mostly because she’s writing what she knows: girls and young women, and she’s just focusing on being very good at that perspective. Little girls lie, 15 year old girls are awkward and shy. None of this is news, but we see things from their viewpoint. It’s more complicated than JUST lying or being shy or apathetic. They have a reason. But it usually ends up being a terrible reason because they’re all immature. I used to have similarly terrible reasoning as a teenager that today I realize made zero sense in adult life. The reasons for their behavior are what force the story to be more than a vignette. It’s about how they realize that their actions do have consequences. Usually in harsh or tragic ways that were blind to them until that moment.

I liked most of the stories, while a few I think needed some rewriting. Here’s some that I loved:

Nine - A little girl turning nine (get it?) starts dealing with the fact her mother has left her. This wasn’t a perfect story, but I believed all the behavior of each character. Especially the dad’s girlfriend, an immature dancer who just took this girl out of school without notice like it wasn’t a big deal. Kind of crosses into the same territory as God of Animals. But still great as its own thing.

Economics - A young woman begins college, gets a job at a struggling gift shop and her general apathy toward everything leads to some serious damage. The real costs of having a life, or no life, is what this is about. So good!

Captain’s Club - This one was actually focused on a preteen boy’s infatuation with his “friend’s” father’s girlfriend Tree (I love that name). It’s about love. How people can ignore it, get cut down by it (HINT HINT) or become empowered by it. I still argue that this is mainly about Tree’s immaturity though, so my initial summary is still valid.

A Lot Like Fun - A former poet now apathetic 2nd grade teacher drifts through life attempting to change before she turns 30, but finding it difficult. She starts a relationship with a divorced man & forms an odd temporary bond with his moody teenage son. Funny and poignant, about how people in their 20’s sometimes are too scared to move forward with their life. And how change is easier said than done.

Femme - The most experimental piece, and the shortest, is an ode to female relationships and how complicated they are. So many facets to one kind of person, and Kyle explores most of them in a kind of fluid timeline of events. It kind of reminded me of Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, except a lot darker.

Allegiance - This story about a little girl moving from England to America is probably the best attempt at understanding that weird moment in childhood when you realize you have to participate in life. She’s in the middle of several fights between her parents, a nerdy girl and some popular girls, and tries to stay neutral but realizes that it can’t last. She has to resort to being cruel to survive. Sad? Yes. But incredibly astute for a moment in all our lives that we don’t usually remember. The moment we realize we have to take care of ourselves before anyone else, even though you will end up hurting the people you love in the process.

Boys and Girls Like You and Me - The title story is so quiet & wonderful, you almost forget that’s it’s just about two screwed up women that end up hiding in a bathroom together. A woman in her twenties has moved to a dumpy town to work for a plagiarizing/paper mill in the hopes of seducing a married man (she doesn’t). She meets a young woman in her apartment building, a teenager in love with another guy (it doesn’t work out either), and the two share this really weird bond that barely exists. Except they both get hurt by people they love (or think they love? I don’t really know). I can’t describe this too well, but it’s about how we’re scared of life moving forward without us, and insecure about our potential. We have to love ourselves, and that’s sometimes the hardest thing about living.

These were just OK:

Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore - The melodramatic climax put me off, but otherwise it’s a great story about a woman confronting patriarchal power at a bookstore she works at. And losing.

Take Care - It was an interesting story about false perceptions and shared identities so I can’t say I wasn’t entertained. But that older sister must have been mentally ill. Her behavior was just not grounded in real life. She stabbed herself with scissors because some guy dumped her? What? And then she spends the rest of the story being a huge bitch to everyone. The younger sister is really who I focused on. But combined with the several subplots I just can’t say this was a great story. There’s a nice twist ending though.

I didn’t really like these much:

Brides - The dialogue was hammy, the “shock(s)” was/were predictable and the message was muddled by all the flat background characters and unfocused plot. I see the potential, but this needed some edits. Kind of like the movie version Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which is the musical these kids are putting on. What, they couldn’t get rights for something lamer? Anything Goes perhaps?

Company of Strangers - In this story about codependency, I didn’t get how a man dies, and no one cares. Like, no one. There was no sadness or grieving. Just “Dad died, OK time to make the donuts” or something to that effect. And I don't really get why the the main characters, an irresponsible young woman & a strict older brother, had issues with their father. I liked all the weirdness of the sister taking her niece and nephew out to eat at some pirate dinner theater (“Just do something Cultural” her brother suggested) and she brings them along when she tries to sleep with a pirate actor who just happens to own some pink, fluffy handcuffs. And I loved the line, “A person is missing only if another person misses them” but ultimately the parts were better than the whole.

These are short stories after all, so by default they all must be depressing. My rule of thumb is, as long as it has a point, it can be as depressing as it wants to be. And even though all these stories have that white/middle class perspective, the messages in it are universal so I never feel like these are strictly lame white people problems. And even though the protagonists are all very similar, I felt like there was some progression in the stories. It wasn’t just repeating itself. By the end, I felt there was some development of her main idea, and the stories by the end of the book seemed to offer an alternative to just being a terrible person. There’s actually a way to survive and possibly be happy.

Her prose are simple. Cool, imaginative descriptions that hint at her point. She’s not reinventing the wheel or forcing me to recognize her awesomeness. All the metaphors and perspectives add up to an emotionally satisfying story which is where the action is. The plots are all subtle but familiar. Serious problems that usually end up being melodramatic in the hands of a bad writer, but she straddles the line between those two with mostly positive results.

I don’t regret reading this collection at all, except for the fact that now there’s nothing left for me to read by Kyle right now. She can make a simple & powerful story, and even when I don’t like them at all I still get it. And I love the title, because it’s from a song that was originally supposed to be in Meet Me in St. Louis, which is a movie I’ve seen about 4 times. Maybe if the kids in Brides did that musical I’d have like it better?

[Jolynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this book was awful. It's a collection of short stories that seem more like lengthy writing prompts. Each one of them is PART of a story- and there is no satisfying conclusion to any of them. They abruptly end leaving the reader wondering, or imagining, what happened after the last word. Like the comparison, they are like writing prompts and you, dear reader, get to make up the ending. If that's appealing to you, you may enjoy some of the stories, but it is not my preference. The stories themselves did not appeal to me, and the gratuitous sex did not either.

I listened to the audiobook version of this, which may have made things worse, as it was initially difficult to tell when a story ended. I thought the book moved on to a new chapter (which it did, I guess), but kept wondering what happened to the characters from chapter 1, and who is so-and-so, the new character. Part way through I realized the author was on to a totally new and unrelated story. This is because there is NO CONCLUSION to the first, or any, story in this book. Again, awful.

[Deborah Dubé · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. Usually short stories escape me or leave me feeling let down. I tend to prefer long books with a lot of character development but Aryn Kyle is such a gifted writer I was hooked from the first sentence of the first story. Kyle gives you a solid feel for her characters in every one of her stories while managing not to waste a word. An exceptional read.

[bri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me a while to finish but I loved every page of this. Each story pulls you in quickly and the writing is so sharp. It’s about love, relationships, and the myriad ways in which people hurt each other (both intentionally and unintentionally). Allegiance and Captain’s Club both hit me right in the heart. Would recommend.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love short stories for multiple reasons and Kyle delivers with this collection. Although I would classify these stories as YA-adjacent (YA isn't my genre) and almost all have a central, flawed female focus, each one has a thought-out and distinct plot. It's a collection of similar yet different.

A great intermission between heavier reads.

[Misha · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Boys and girls like you and me" is a book of short stories by Aryn
Kyle that I have recently read.

Kyle's stories seem like facets of her own life and personality, warts
and all. A British girl coming to America and having to adjust to the
local culture and navigate her way among cliques of popular girls. A
child of a traumatic divorce. A college girl who does not care about
education, wants to smoke pot and drink instead. Somebody who does not
possess any particular talent or drive to succeed, but just happen to
be gifted with an ability to write and cursed with a bleeding heart.
A girl who fell deeply in love in high-school and was left devastated
afterwards. And then again, she fell for a married man. The second
time around the love was so destructive that she completely fell apart
and lost her desire to do anything but to love the person who is
neither deserving of her love nor man enough to be with her.

The characters/author is never quite grown or mature. She is
self-centered and inward looking. Her own mental anguish crowds out
everything else in life. One of the characters decides to join Peace
Corps as a means of escaping her own wretched existence. When she
finds out that she would likely be doing something less than glamorous
and heroic in the faraway place, she quickly drops the idea.

Recently, my short-stories benchmark is "Drown" by Junot Diaz. I think
this book measures up. Kyle is being forthright and talks about what
she knows best: her own life. Her style is unsophisticated. She does
not bother with long descriptions. Instead, she grabs the reader's
attention with brutal, occasionally over the top, honesty. How about
this for a beginning paragraph? "[my boyfriend], I knew, was not in
love with me the way that I was in love with him and would quickly
abandon the idea of me without the actual me around to keep him
distracted with bl0wjobs." She then keeps the reader off balance with
dispassionate narrative that reveals how f@cked up the lives and the
relationships of her characters are. She does not sugar coat the
stories with happy endings. Neither does she dwell on particularly
gruesome scenes. She just gives the glimpse of the proverbial train
wreck with the twisted metal mingled with body parts and then quietly
walks away.

Her plots are themselves often gripping. Nobody reads my shidt,
anyway, right? So it does not matter if I throw in spoilers to a few
stories I liked best.

* A teenage girl puts out for her drama teacher. Out of teen angst
and boredom I am guessing. The teacher is in desperate and
hopeless love with her talented but vain classmate. He makes love
to this stand-in with closed eyes without ever kissing her.

* A spoiled pre-teen jock goes on a Mediterranean cruise with his
divorced father. By chance, his peer from a poor family gets to
accompany him. The father brings his new girlfriend who is
significantly younger than he is. The girl quit her job and dropped
everything to come on this trip. However, the father ends up going
to the ship's casino and chasing tour guides most of the trip while
his son is playing games in the arcade. So the girl spends her time
with the poor boy: shopping for his family's presents and visiting
antique sites. The boy falls in his first puppy-love. Later, the
father sends the boys away from the cabin for the evening while the
girl, it seems, needs a good helping of liquor to get with the
program. To the poor boy the whole thing feels like a betrayal. He
goes on deck and sees a once-in-a-lifetime sight of an incredible
Mediterranean sunset. He noticed that the father left so he runs
back to the cabin to tell the girl about the sight only to find her
in a drunken imbecile stupor.

* The family of a middle-school girl just moves from England to the US.
While living in England the girl's American father cheated on her
mother. The mother wants to get away from the place so they come to
the US. The mother finds everything there foreign. She clings to
her daughter as the only thing left dear to her. Meanwhile, the
girl struggles for acceptance in school. She is treated like an
outsider by the clique of girls. Finally, she is given a chance to
get in by jointly humiliating a bumbling naive classmate who
thought that the British girl was her friend. Then, the British
girl is invited to a sleepover party to the house of one of the
popular girls. The British girl sees this as an opportunity to gain
further acceptance. However, her mother finds this American custom
objectionable and does not allow her to go. Her father sees nothing
wrong with it. The parents get into an argument which quickly
becomes heated with the mother's hatred of America and the father's
infidelity coming up. While her mother is sobbing in the bathroom,
the girl quietly asks the father if she can go to the sleepover
party.

I usually find it hard to relate to exactly these topics covered by
women-writers. But I guess Kyle has just caught me at the right (or
wrong?) time. Oh, well.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book leaves an impression. It's unsettling and outright hostile at times - but in all the right ways. If you've ever felt lonely or other, or are scared by your own thoughts or actions then you'll be able to relate. I think this book captures those feelings perfectly.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the characters in these short stories are shallow. They are young women who are the other woman or selfish and petty towards other women. You get to see a more vulnerable side of these women as you read and see where they are lacking in self confidence. Fantastic author

[Shannan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came away from each story really knowing the characters; rooting for them even though they were clearly lost causes. This collection just made me sad. Bad decisions on top of bad decisions, although accurate to the characters, left me feeling hopeless. 4 stars for the writing, it was so good.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it. Clearly not enough to write a memorable review (I also waited too long after I finished it), but it was an enjoyable listen, which means the stories had clear beginnings and ends (more than I can say for a lot of short stories!).

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

well-written stories about people with seriously messed up lives

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read Carver's Cathedral I thought "Wow, that's a lot of alcoholics!" When I read Kyle's Boys and Girls I thought "Wow, that's a lot of adulterers!"

[Arotella · Rating 2 out of 5]

These stories seemed to last finesse, but perhaps “rough around the edges” is the style. Either way, they weren’t for me.

[Anita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting collection of short stories, mostly about young persons drinking and smoking a lot and their relationship woes. A pretty quick read.