Her Body and Other Parties

Especially Heinous, the novella-length story structured as fake Law and Order: SVU episode summaries, is the collection's single most polarizing entry, and readers who don't buy the gamble say they “can't look past the law and order fanfiction.” The sex scenes in several stories read as clinical rather than erotic, and Mothers is named as the story readers understand least, with more than one saying they lost track of what actually happened by its end. Individual pieces work as a concept or an image, readers say, but never fully become a finished story with real stakes underneath, and one reviewer compares the effect to “pies with excellent crust but filling that is all whipped cream.” A blunter dissent puts it plainest: “most of these stories felt half-baked.”