Two standout stories made this collection for me: "Indian Cooking" and "We're All In This Alone." Much of this collection delves into discomfort and brings the reader along for the ride, and these two stories were particularly successful in bringing the nuances of pain home to the reader. In "Indian Cooking," our protagonist's mother badly burns her face and turns to a vicious humour to deal with her new reality. It is not the burns that are treated as the horror, but the grief, rage, and laughter her mother holds about them—so intense as to evoke the most peculiar combination of sympathy and bewilderment in the reader. 

In "We're All In This Alone," we are given one of the only sympathetic portraits of men in the book. If we imagine the protagonists of these stories as one person—my central criticism of the collection is that this is incredibly easy to do—the one man who loved her well also blistered her skin. I ended both of these stories deeply moved in unexpected ways, and they were the standouts for me. 

Many relatable tales about the horrors of dating and social anxiety, particularly while being a brown woman in Canada, ultimately grew repetitious for me, but that's not to say the stories aren't all competent; they are, and some are even stunningly moving. I do hope this author collects more readers and I will happily recommend the collection.