Twisty Ends and Tangly Tales 2 by Susan Brewer ~ A Review

Twisty Ends and Tangly Tales 2 by Susan Brewer

Published: Amazon Kindle

Length: 103 Pages (Kindle Edition)

Where Did I Get It? Off Amazon for free. Now available for £2.06.

Summary (From Goodreads): A follow up to Twisty Ends and Tangly Tales 1, here is a further selection of short stories by author Susan Brewer. Originally, the majority of these were published in various women’s magazines. Humorous, romantic, nostalgic or even a bit zany, these stories are the perfect length to read while you have your cup of tea or coffee. And maybe a biscuit as well!

Opening Line (of the first Short Story ‘A Surprise Proposal’):

When Adam proposed, Sue was surprised – and delighted.

~

My Review: Twisty Ends and Tangly Tales 2 is a good fun read perfect for either dipping into between chores or reading cover to cover on a train (which is what I did). The stories are charming and made me smile and even giggle out loud at the antics of characters and the surprise twists in the tales hinted at in the title.

Not a series in any way but a collection of entirely unrelated stories, there is something for everyone but there is an over-running sense of warmth running through the stories – they tug at the warm fluffy places inside you and bring out smiles at happy memories and situations similar to ones we have all experienced. Moments where you have heard something the wrong way or a child has said something that has baffled you or made you giggle at an inappropriate time and, of course, that time where you flashed your most beautiful smile at the hot bloke on the street only to later realise your eyeliner was smudges and you had your jumper on inside out. We’ve all been there and Twisty Ends plays on this to make you laugh.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the collection and though I can’t say as any of the stories will stay with me forever, they were a fantastic way to pass my train journey home from London on a sunny afternoon and earned me a fair few funny looks as I giggled away to myself in the corner.

My Rating: 4/5*

Short Story Collections – How Do You Eat Yours?

I like a good short story just as much as any novel but I find I haven’t got the stamina to read a whole book of them all at once.

You might be thinking, ‘that makes no sense’, but it does. Honest.

When you approach a novel you are committing yourself to one big story with characters you will get to know and follow throughout all 300 or so pages. A short story collection may be the same amount of pages but, more often than not, they’re unrelated stories and characters. Sometimes they’re all on a theme or share a location or single character but not always and even when they do, I have the same problem.

If I try to read a collection all the way through I get frustrated because my head tries to link them all into one story even though I know they aren’t. This is why it takes me three times longer to read a book of short stories than it does to read an epic fantasy tome – I have to read it in bits, one or two stories at a time, in between reading other things.

I write them in a similar manner. Never more than two in a row and they usually pop up in the middle of other, longer pieces.

There are some short story collections in my Summer Break Challenge line-up and I’m telling you now they will be the ones that take me longest to get through. This doesn’t mean I dislike reading them, I’m just very particular about how I go about it. Maybe it’s just me, I don’t know. Can you read whole collections at once?