 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about False Bingo by Jack Jensk. I'll put the picture over here. It was a digital ARC, so it was an ebook copy. I blew through it. I didn't blow through it. Let me stop lying. I took my time with it. I've read, I think, one or two stories a night. Some of the stories were on the longer side. If they were, you know, longer, I usually only read that one story. It took me about two weeks, two or three weeks to read. This is, like I said, I did get the copy for free from NetGalley. I enjoyed it overall. I think my least favorite story of the bunch is actually the longest story in the collection. I'm going to link down there in the doobly-doo to my review on Goodreads. You're going to get a more in-depth experience reading that review than what you're going to get here. The reasoning for that is I can't recall the names of some of the stories. I don't think that's the point. Usually the titles, though, were double entendres or they had double meeting kind of thing, where, like, Trivial Pursuit was about a couple looking for a friendship, a couple to do things with, but also it was about them, you know, their love of playing board games. So the Trivial Pursuit, the board game, a Trivial Pursuit and trying to find friends that, you know, that share the same interests as you, that kind of thing. My favorite story in the entire collection is called Don't Let's, and that's one of the stories that I want to focus on with this review, because I actually believe wholeheartedly that the entire collection is worth reading for this story alone. I'm not saying the price of admission would be worth it. I'm just saying if you're going to try this collection, the reason to try it is for the story, don't let's. Opening up, the reader asks a bunch of questions, not all of them are answered, but I think the important ones are, and it is the closest you were going to come to the type of experience that you got, if you read Jen's second novel, I believe it was, the grip of it. You're going to get the same feel there where the author is trying to install dread without too much input. There is a bit of lore in that short story that I absolutely loved. I'd never heard it before. If any of you are familiar with the lore when the book finally comes out in October, if you're familiar with the lore, if you get an ARC and you want to talk to me about it, I would love to talk to you about it because it's not something that I've heard of, so if the author created it, that's fantastic. If not, I would love to learn more about that, but that's also not the point of the story. Now, going back to the grip of it, and also want to talk about the description problem I had with this one. It says it's a collection of sinister stories, something, they used the word sinister. I did not get that from this collection. What I got from this collection was a collection of very eclectic works ranging from a darkly comic to literary, to there's a little bit of horror in Don't Let's. There are some other stories that made me feel uncomfortable, but I never found anything sinister, except for in the story Don't Let's. So if you're going into this collection expecting a collection of horror stories, you are going to be drastically disappointed. This story does have tremendous writing, terrific points, very poignant pieces in here, especially the one about homeschooling, the lady in her daughter who lived off the grid was another one of my favorite stories. That's another one I can't... Now, going back to the one that I didn't like, I don't want to harp on this too much, but I can't pronounce the name of the one that I don't like. It's Mua Lawawi or something like that. I don't know. That alone is probably offensive to somebody that I can't pronounce that. But that's the only story that I didn't like. And I think it's only because I missed the point of the story. There were a couple of stories that I think were directed more towards a woman's perspective that I'm just never going to understand. Like, I'm never going to be sitting on a bus and worried that the guy across from me is going to rape me, or that the guy delivering the trash outside is going to attack me when I get off the bus. That's not something that I've ever thought in my life, but I do know that from a female's perspective, that is something that you guys have to worry about all the time. I get that. So while I don't... And there's a story in there like that which I enjoyed reading about. I just didn't... I think that's the point. If that's not the point, I fully admit I completely missed the point. And that's fine, especially with works like this. It's fine for you to say, hey, I missed the point. That's completely natural that you're not going to catch everything all the time. But I would like to talk to anybody who's read these stories about the point of some of the stories that I think I missed the point of, or that the point just didn't resonate with me. Maybe I got the point right. It just didn't resonate with me. Another thing is, if you are the type of reader who likes a beginning, middle, and end every single story you read, this probably isn't going to be for you. There's a lot of slice of life stories in here that don't go anywhere. Really, there's a point. There's a literary purpose. There's a theme. There's all that. But you're not going to get a beginning, middle, and end. Usually you drop you right in the middle of something and then alludes to an ending is what most of these stories do. Again, if I'm wrong, I'd love to talk to you guys about that. But my favorite story in the collection is Don't Let's. It was a fantastic dive into some of the scenery that I see around myself all the time, even though it's not the same scenery. It is a southern atmosphere. And I appreciated the lore in that story. There are several fantastic stories in here. And if you want to see more about what I liked and what I didn't like, you can click on the link down there. It'll say, Goodreads Review, and I will link you to that review. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!