Precarious

The stories in Precarious are about doing the right thing and regretting it. About making bets and dancing naked.

They play out in rain-soaked Seattle and drought-stricken California. In the front seat of Mom's Malibu and a vacation cabin on Cape Cod. On a tiny island and in a desert filled with light and heat and sand that slips through your fingers like friendships you once had.

In these fifteen stories you will meet a boy trying to make it through that summer between the end of high school and the beginning of something else. A woman attracted to a man with muscles, because it makes her feel safe...until it doesn't. A man who can only imagine what it's like to sleep with many different women, but that's OK -he has a good imagination.

In prose that is by turns spare and lyrical, the stories of Precarious capture the feeling of late summer. A never-ending game of Kick the Can. All sense of time lost among the stars.

I won this in a giveaway. Stories of Love, Sex, and Misunderstandings. Yes, I was intrigued. But this has got to be the hardest book I've ever reviewed or commented on. But here it is...


This book is filled with stories about choices, some made in a heartbeat while some span over a lifetime. With each choice made there is a path left untaken and as intelligent, living beings we are left to carry the regret and what-ifs that follow. That is the theme of Precarious.

With fifteen tales casting a multitude of characters, it’s not difficult for anyone to find something to relate to. That is the beauty of Precarious.

They are not stories meant to make you feel good. Many left me depressed. Infidelity was a strong, recurring theme throughout the collection. Religion and sexuality were others. And then there are some that are just odd and can only blow your mind.

I most enjoyed: ‘Sleeping With Smiley’, where we find a young man’s memory of the chance he had to be with his best friend’s girl; ‘Dance Naked’, for its suspense and thrill of hope; and ‘Taken’, for its unpredictable, twisted ending.

Now.. to rate it. I liked it, so three stars is a definite start. I really liked some of the characters, so four is a maybe. What I find dragging is the constant infidelity. How can I give five stars (AMAZING!) to something like that?