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Title: Dear Humans

Author: Hollie Adams

Genre: Literary fiction, novellas & short stories

See review on Goodreads!

Thanks to the publisher for the e-arc via Netgalley

Blurb:

Dear Humans brings together an intriguing cast of characters, ranging from a disgruntled recent PhD graduate to a young woman growing a unicorn horn. With her signature dry wit, Hollie Adams shines as the fantastic meets the hyper realistic in this brand new collection of short stories.

The Stories (in order):

1. The Other Portland
2. Eyebrow
3. Like That but Times a Million
4. The Documentary We’ve Been Making for Fifty Years
5. Safe Topics
6. The Meek
7. Liking It
8. The Charges
9. The Sessional Years
10. Not Dead Yet
11. Paviones
12. Trial Separation
13. How to Survive

As a whole, I enjoyed this collection of emotional and raw short stories.

I don’t know if it’s just because it was the last one in the set, but of the 13 short stories, I enjoyed “How to Survive.” By far, it is one of the most intriguing of the bunch.

Rarely do I ever read stories written in second person. Regardless, “How to Survive” expertly toes the line between diary entries and a how-to-navigate-life tutorial. Additionally, the short story is broken up into two characters: a mom, Lillian, and her daughter, Sarah.

The story starts with Lillian’s entries from March 2004 to December 2005, interspersed with Sarah’s entries from 2012, working back to 1986. Lillian’s entries explore marital issues and cancer diagnosis, while Sarah’s explore tragedy and growing up.

Most of the stories feature characters with PhDs or MFAs in English who are navigating the industry. 

Some of the stories are a little strange, like the one about a woman growing a horn on her forehead. It’s up to interpretation on what that means. The blurb explicitly says it is a unicorn horn, but I didn’t realize that at first.