Earlier this year I got a little bit burned out on long books and went on a bit of a short story binge. It also helps that there are a bunch of Amazon Prime free short stories. I love a free book. So this is a collection of the short stories I read when I was going through my regular book burnout. Some were good, and some were meh. None were really terrible. Five of the books were from the Amazon “Deadly Ambition” series, which is a collection of stories about greed and sinister choices to feed ambition. Awesomely these five stories were free on Audible too! The first one is not part of this series by the way.
Leave It Up to Love
Our heroine Lila is a barista / novelist. Her favorite romance writer comes to her coffee shop and somehow Lila’s literary agent gets her a ghostwriting job for her idol (Elizabeth). She’s extremely wary because she wants to continue to write her own stories. After some back and forth (and money), she relents. Lila goes to her idol’s amazing beach house and starts the ghostwriting process.
Elizabeth and Lila butt heads for weeks and weeks over how much input Lila has on the story, and whose story it really is. As this is a short story about two writers, and one of them is a big shot romance writer, you know there will be a love story. Lila and Elizabeth’s son spend time together and bring out the best in each other.
I gave this three stars because I was impressed how much story was jam packed into so few pages, but it was a little predictable.
The Silent Muse
I liked this one. It was a little bit dark and seedy, while still being a pretty straightforward story. Hannah is a struggling artist. I think it was her mom who is a rich and famous artist or art agent. I can’t remember, but Hannah feels like she’s in her shadow. She’s trying to break into the art scene, but she doesn’t quite have what the market wants. As she’s wandering through an estate sale to kill time and try to find some inspiration, she sees an unfinished painting in someone’s attic. A family member of the artist tells Hannah that she was going to get rid of the painting, so she’s welcome to it.
Hannah takes the painting home and it kind of haunts her. She’s worried that she doesn’t have enough talent to paint like the anonymous late artist. She decides that she’ll use the painting as a sort of “silent muse” you might say. She adds a little of her own style to the painting and basically finishes it. Her literary agent / friend / aunt? comes over to talk to her and sees the painting and doesn’t really give Hannah a chance to say no when she wants to put the painting in a gallery show.
Of course the “stolen” painting gets praise and earns Hannah money and fame and gives Hannah the confidence she needs to actually paint better. There’s some side story about someone knowing her secret, and I don’t remember what it was, but it doesn’t really affect her that much. Four stars.
The Line
I didn’t love this one. It’s basically a story about a struggling journalist trying to get a leg up. She’s trying not to do it the “wrong way” by being a slimeball and do gossip stories. But she hears a rumor about a famous actor possibly being gay. There’s a bunch of fighting over the story with another journalist she knows who definitely is a slimeball. I can’t remember the details about who wins and how it ends, but I remember not really enjoying this. 2.5 stars
The Price of Honey
Ooh I definitely liked this one. I’m not surprised because I’ve enjoyed a large percentage of Liane Moriarty’s books. This story felt a little Black Mirror to me, and that’s a compliment.
Our main character is Honey Beckett. We learn at the beginning that AI is taking over a lot of everyday life, including “putting on” makeup. She is on the way to her tech billionaire husband Barney’s funeral and chatting it up with her uber driver. Through Honey’s tale we learn about how she met her older husband, how romantic he was, and what an amazing tech genius he was. Slowly through her story though, we learn that Barney was kind of a dick, and definitely controlling. At the funeral we meet Barney’s three ex-wives and a little bit of their stories too. From his first wife through to Honey, each subsequent ex-wife (or current wife) was a cause of the previous wife’s divorce. Somehow they all kinda bond over Barney and how they can’t believe he’s dead. I don’t want to ruin the Black Mirror-y part of the story, but it’s good, and it gave me good revenge feelings. Four stars.
You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone
I wanted to like this one more than I actually did. The premise is cool, but the characters are very unlikeable and kinda dumb.
Rachel seems like a bit of an overachiever, and she’s definitely Type A. She’s been married for a few years, but her husband Jake seems to be losing interest. Rachel has all these grand plans and thoughts about why Jake is slipping away. She decides that the best way to get him to love her again is to fake a kidnapping / attack / something sinister. She leaves a bloody handprint on the bathroom mirror, makes some signs of a struggle around the house, and then I think leaves her phone somewhere she can’t get to.
Her grand plan is that Jake will see she’s in trouble, and it’ll activate some primitive husband urge in him and he’ll remember why he fell in love with her and all will be well. She also thinks it’s a great idea to wait for Jake to find her in a well of some sort at the back of their property. She has an ipad to keep an eye on what’s going on in the house while she waits to get rescued.
In what feels like a real positive for having surveillance in your house, she sees her husband behaving badly instead of coming to save her. There are a few twists, and it looks really bad for a little while. I would’ve given this more stars, but I hated everyone and didn’t want them to thrive, so I gave it 3 stars.
A Fatal Delivery
I didn’t rate this one after I read it, so I don’t remember what my initial thoughts were, but hopefully I can work it out by the time I get to the end of this review!
We meet Lenora and realize pretty quickly that she’s probably on the spectrum and needs to follow her patterns and schedule to feel right. She’s likeable right away though, and you end up rooting for her throughout the story. Lenora is a delivery driver for what seems like Amazon or something like that. She has regular customers and a pretty standard route. So basically she’s a dream victim for a setup.
Lenora delivers something to a customer’s house, and things are weird. I can’t remember what she sees to make her suspect something is up. It was either like a barking dog, or a blood spatter, or an open door, or all three. Lenora goes inside and sees her customer bludgeoned and dead on the floor. Very shortly the victim’s nephew arrives on the scene and accused Lenora of murdering his aunt. The police show up and of course Lenora is a suspect.
I feel like I’d act just like Lenora and think “I can solve this”. Her meticulousness works in her favor and it all seems to work out in the end. I’m gonna go with 3.5 stars, because I liked Lenora.
The Roommate
OK I mentioned earlier that a story had Black Mirror vibes. This one totally does too. I remember watching an episode of Black Mirror that was just like the start of this book. The ending is very different from the show though.
Elena and her husband are watching a show on the couch and Elena starts to realize that she knows this story exactly. It’s almost a frame for frame reenactment of what happened with her, her ex-husband / ex-boyfriend / I can’t remember, and an old roommate many years ago.
Elena and her man at the time had a roommate that sounded like an absolute nightmare. She does all the stuff you can think of to be a bad roommate. I would’ve probably murdered her, or at least locked her out and called the police.
I loved the way I got sucked in and pulled along for the ride. I did not see the twist coming, which was cool. Four stars.
