The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

A married deacon or pastor, a light-skinned mother, an insecure daughter: the same church-affair triangle recurs across enough of these nine stories that one reader calls seven of them “good three stars to mediocre two stars” rather than the near-uniform rave elsewhere. The men come off underwritten across the board, thin on interior life and present mainly to be cheated with or cheated on; one reader says she “struggled with the paucity of male psychology and the inconsistent prose.” 'Not-Daniel,' a hookup story set in a hospice parking lot, is named as the hardest entry to sit with, unflinching rather than enjoyable. At least one critical reader flags the queer relationships as more damaged and closed-off than the straight ones, and calls the collection overall “moderately overhyped.”