Because my reviews for these short stories were also short, I decided to group them together and share a couple at a time. I’ll be doing this for future reviews of short stories - putting 3 reviews together in the same post.
Reviews of 3 of K.C. Silkwood’s Short Stories
Naked at School
Overall, I give this 4 stars.
When I picked this up, I was expecting to read a short fluff piece about a sorority initiation and somebody embracing the joy of being naked; what I didn’t expect was to learn that there is an entire subgenre of erotica called “embarrassed nude female”. Well, now I know!
This was a fun romp. I enjoyed the creativity of the protagonist, attempting to overcome all the challenges placed before her and using her wits to get through the initiation. I have no experiences with college initiations myself, as I never went to a university with dorms or fraternities/sororities, and so I cannot say how realistic it is; but I can say that the protagonist’s feelings were well expressed.
If you are looking for a light, quick, fun read, and can tolerate secondhand embarrassment, I would recommend this.
Stripped on the Softball Field
Two Stars.
This adventure was less fun than Naked at School; the protagonist, Christy, is a bully, and what she and her cohorts do to set up the series of events is assault. None of that was fun. And the revenge placed upon Christy was extreme and potentially dangerous.
I can tolerate secondhand embarrassment, and I am a fan of seeing people use their intellect to work their way through tough and unusual situations. But this adventure had minimal use of wits and was the result of hazing.
Bare at the Beach
I can see something like this happening. Four stars.
This series of unfortunate events is something I can picture happening in real life, especially to United States citizens traveling internationally. There are two things that make me believe that something like this being possible: 1) the puritan prudishness that is a part of the US sociological norms; and, 2) the number of US citizens who give the rest of the populace the reputation of having an inflated sense of entitlement, especially when traveling internationally. I am not saying that the latter applies to the main characters, but enough people are like this where it is easy to presume that any US citizen would be like that.
One simple mistake made due to an excited overreaction is the pebble that starts the avalanche, and that is well described here as Abby and Jennifer try to get back to their hotel. I feel for them; but the story ends where it does because of the genre of these short stories, and the ending is quite believable.
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