Boys and Girls Like You and Me: Stories
Award-winning author Aryn Kyle has created a intriguing and mesmerizing work in her latest literary accomplishment, a captivating short story collection: Boys and Girls Like You and Me. Diving into the lives of characters full of angst, hope, and fear Kyle has put forth eleven stories that will transform and inspire. Eleven stories crafted to make an impact on almost any reader.
The majority of her characters are female and making quite disastrous life choices, often horrid decisions, pathologically lying, or even crossing moral boundaries many hold dear. However readers will find themselves hungrily reading story after story, finding the characters both fascinating and even likable. Like an addictive drug, once begun, it cannot be stopped.
From nine-year-old Tess who has spent most her young life creating her own world through lies and manipulation, to the single Leigh who still pines over a past love while trying to search for the true path her life should take, Kyle’s central characters are strong and unique in multiple ways, each showing her incredible attributes as the author’s stories elegantly unfold.
It is the characters in Kyle’s work that make these stories unforgettable. She has truly gone above and beyond in creating characters that readers will not only respond to but relate to and even be shocked by. Thus her new book is impossible to put down. Much like The God of Animals, it is in many ways breathtaking in its beauty and honesty. Kyle’s short story “Femme” even goes so far to demonstrate the deep understanding the author has for the relationships frequently formed between women and the trust boundaries often forged and broken. She is an artist of words, but also an observer of life whose accounts will leave readers wanting more.
This reviewer is generally not a fan of the short story genre but will continue to sing the praises that are so deserved by Boys and Girls Like You and Me. And perhaps in the future it will also cause me not to judge a book by its genre but to look deeper into the soul of writing which most often lies within its characters and their relationships with others.