I am having a Presbyterian-upbringing-panic-attack but I am going to keep posting these reviews through it--I am so proud of the stories in this collection. From the Rocky Mountain News:
One of the things Merrick objects to in "chick lit" is its numbing sameness. For example, she points out the homogeneity of its heroines: white and reasonably affluent. This is clearly not the case in this collection. Some narrators are not white, some aren't Americans. Some are men, others are gay.
All are struggling with larger problems than finding Mr. Right. A majority of the stories address the characters' attempts to shore up lives teetering on the edge of emptiness, lives in which promises have proven hollow and other paths must be found. Even when an apparent Mr. Right does show up, as in Embrace, by Roxana Robinson, it's complicated, messy, and finally placed in a much larger human context.