Review of 'Bad Romance' by Emily Hill

I'm not always the biggest fan of short stories - they have to be really well done for me to enjoy them at all - but I had high hopes for this. From the blurb/outset it sounded great: vaguely feminist stories about different situations women encounter, however I really struggled to enjoy this.

The stories in the collection are all written by the same author, and range across a variety of different situations, from a woman faking pregnancy at her ex's wedding to get back at him, to another woman being widowed under circumstances you'd never expect. I really wanted to enjoy this, and I liked the idea of the stories, but I just feel as though they weren't very well done. 

Each story had a woman in it that was so similar it meant all the stories weren't very distinct from one another, but different enough to make it disjointed. There was also a twist at the end of each story, which was another thing that sort of bound these stories into being a bit similar, but sometimes it felt like the twist was so forced that the story no longer made sense? I really struggled to get my head around the whole book because of it.

I gave this 2 stars because there were a couple of the short stories that I enjoyed. I just felt as though it either needed to be more coherent or more dissonant, and not have this weird in-between state that made it a not very enjoyable read. I found myself really trying to tear through this to finish it as soon as possible.

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