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A review by elnechnntt
Hold Your Fire by Chloe Wilson
3.0
An incredibly polished collection of short and flash fiction, I found every single story to be scrubbed to perfection.
So I’m not sure why I didn’t love this more than I did. I enjoyed the stories but ... perhaps they were almost too polished and about halfway through, it began to feel very formulaic for me. Every story followed the same map of delivery: a couple engaged in some heterosexual style of relationship, something a little gruesome, a bodily fluid, a cold realisation, a perfunctory closing line.
I think if I had read one or two of these stories on their own they would have blown me away but an entire collection seemed to loose its power.
Wilson has a compelling mastery for her craft, and the stories are faultless. It was just missing that ... something ... I can’t quite explain it.
So I’m not sure why I didn’t love this more than I did. I enjoyed the stories but ... perhaps they were almost too polished and about halfway through, it began to feel very formulaic for me. Every story followed the same map of delivery: a couple engaged in some heterosexual style of relationship, something a little gruesome, a bodily fluid, a cold realisation, a perfunctory closing line.
I think if I had read one or two of these stories on their own they would have blown me away but an entire collection seemed to loose its power.
Wilson has a compelling mastery for her craft, and the stories are faultless. It was just missing that ... something ... I can’t quite explain it.