I'm not a huge short story fan, but I've really liked everything I've read from Curtis Sittenfeld, so I wanted to read this collection. It was fantastic. Each story is about a relationship in some form or another, and the things that could go wrong or right in those relationships. The stories were really engaging and sometimes cringe-worthy, and I really didn't want this book to end!

Short stories are not my thing. I’ve only really loved two short story collections in my entire life (Beneath the Bonfire and Why They Run the Way They Do). I can now make that three because I adored this collection…it’s unquestionably 5 stars for me! The three collections I’ve loved all have one thing in common: the stories have something idiosyncratic in them, but are otherwise about mundane life. The stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It are mostly about otherwise normal relationships that have a hidden element of unconventionality or an awkward incident. They’re normal situations that end up taking unexpected turns…they’re relatable, yet surprising. I was completely invested in the characters in every story, which is a rarity for me with short stories. If you’ve been hesitant to try short stories, You Think It, I’ll Say It is a perfect first collection!

A sharply-written and insightful collection of stories from judgment to jealousy and beyond, with a focus on nostalgia and the past. Sittenfeld has a strong eye for human desires and interactions. I would definitely recommend.

This was… a really nice surprise. Literary short stories are not something I tend to reach for, but I loved this, and I want to thank my fellow reviewerLarry so much for recommending this collection and for constantly reviewing books that don’t seem like my thing but… end up being my thing?

All these stories are about incorrect
perception: of those around you, if yourself, of a situation. And they are so much fun.

This collection had an average rating of 4.0 for me, which is a result of an exact split: five three star stories and five five star stories. Let me explain myself: I think pretty much any story in this book could be rounded up or down to a four. They are all of high writing quality, with a touch of ironic humor and plenty of sarcasm. I had personal favorites, but every one of these feels very strong, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed no matter what.

→ Gender Studies ← ★★★☆☆
About a gender studies professor and her one-night relationship with a Trump-supporting taxi driver in 2016. This is about how women can feel connected to men who don’t share their sensibilities or way of looking at the world. Loved the inner monologue, just overall mixed on what it’s trying to convey or… the point?

→ The World Has Many Butterflies ← ★★★☆☆
Follows a woman named Julie who becomes obsessed with a man named Greg because he makes her feel like herself. Sort of obvious in messaging and not particularly memorable, but I enjoyed it all the same.

→ Vox Clamantis in Deserto ← ★★★★★
Follows a woman who decides to be like a girl she sees named Rae. An interesting story about how we can be strongly impacted by someone else but not impact them at all.

→ Bad Latch ← ★★★★★
Follows a woman at a pregnancy group and her observations about Gretchen, a woman who seems engineered to make other new mothers feel bad about themselves. It’s essentially about the guilt felt by new mothers who ask for help. Also, I honestly found this hilarious?

→ Plausible Deniability ← ★★★☆☆
Follows a man emailing a woman music notes, and also his relationship with his brother. This was certainly not bad, and plays with the same kind of romantic-vs-innocent perception as the earlier The World Has Many Butterflies, but was kind of forgettable for me? Points for some twists, but overall not a fave.

→ A Regular Couple ← ★★★★★
Follows a woman named Maggie who has just defended a man accused of rape in court, her far-less-successful husband Jason, and her nightmare from high school, Ashley Frye. This story is about power dynamics between people, primarily. Again, a really interesting story – every one of the characters is hard to know what to make of.

→ Off the Record ← ★★★☆☆
This follows an interviewer named Nina on her last interview with a woman named Kelsey she met five years before. I honestly felt nothing for this; it didn’t feel like it was trying to say much, and

→ The Prairie Wife ← ★★★★★
Follows a woman obsessing over her first girl date. This one is nice because it plays with your expectations a lot – all these stories are about incorrect perception of those around you, but this one plays with audience expectations as well, which is not true of every one.

→ Volunteers are Shining Stars ← ★★★☆☆
A woman and a new volunteer who appears. I thought this one was honestly kind of… odd? It plays with a narrator who frames her actions in different light than we’d expect, which is something I always enjoy, but it honestly just didn’t do much for me.

→ Do Over ← ★★★★★
Follows two high schoolers looking back on events of their school days. This was so weird, but I adored it? Both of the two leads feel very real and are both likable and hatable depending on the page.

all in all: despite being a little variant in how much I loved the stories, I thought this book was overall quite a solid read, with some excellent stories. Would highly recommend to fans of literary short stories or slice-of-life.

A delightful collection. Sittenfeld's prose has always been sharp, but the short form here makes it all too apparent just how talented she is.

4 stars.*

You Think It, I'll Say It is a book of modern short stories.

A genre I am typically mixed on, in this case, I adored it. The common theme is human relationships, snap judgment and how characters of various backgrounds and gender.

Curtis Sittenfeld tends to choose protagonists that are white, well-educated, and at or approaching middle-age. She deftly manages to tackle the sticky details of marriage and relationships without relying on cliche or making her characters trite or caricatures.

I'll definitely be looking for more of her work.

*ARC received from #netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I couldn't imagine I would like another Curtis Sittenfeld book as much as Prep... but this collection of stories was every bit as compelling and well-written. And fun to read-- can I say that? when every character was a little bit broken and troubled. I can. Recommended.

This collection from Curtis Sittenfeld is full of moments. Small, tiny, slices of life - of moments, of a specific time and place and situation. A professor on a trip, a recently divorced man meeting a high school classmate, a high-powered attorney on her honeymoon. These are just...snapshots of moments.

And every single moment is fantastic. This will surely be on many 'best of' lists come December.

Each story is thoughtful and insightful in it's own way, but for me, the standout is The Prairie Wife. It's just......short story perfection.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Sittenfeld's collection of short stories has moments both serious and humorous, packing a punch in a short book. An enjoyable and compelling read.

Very good short story collection! I really enjoy Curtis Sittenfeld's writing. There is adult content in several of the stories. I would recommend this for mature readers.

There are some (wide ranging) political views expressed. I don't really care to have that in my fiction but in this case it was minimal

I really enjoy a book of short stories. Of course, most of the time, I tend to love a few stories and not really feel anything for the rest. That was not the case here. I really liked every story and felt they completed a circle with each ending. I did not feel as if I was cheated for the short amount of time each story took. The characters were all fully fleshed out in each tale and I totally got what each of them was feeling. From the woman who thought her game of You Think It, I’ll Say It was leading her into an affair to a lawyer meeting up with a woman from her old high school on her honeymoon, I truly understood where they were coming from. It is a fascinating read and I heard that Reese Witherspoon is making a series based on the stories. I cannot wait to see them on the screen and see if I envisioned them the same way.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for a copy of this book.

Share this:

It's very rare for me that I actually read a book of short stories and even rarer that I actually truly like and enjoy every single story within the collection. Curtis Sittenfeld manages to present fully developed stories, with realized, whole characters. I never felt like I was missing something or a story felt complete. While there were some characters I would have wanted to spend more time with, I never felt like there was a story that was in complete or a characters who was underdeveloped. It's an impressive feat that only Sittenfeld could pull off.

I truly loved this new collection of stories by Curtis Sittenfeld. I found so many of them to be deeply humorous, hyper-real portraits of adults confronting their own emotional "ugliness," - things like jealousy, envy, general malaise. I connected with this book so much, I read it in one sitting.

I think Curtis Sittenfeld writes wonderfully. I’ve enjoyed some of her past books.
This particular book is a collection of short stories (I should mention I don’t love short stories). They are based on controversial subjects. I only read a few of them. Although I still stand by my statement that she is a good author, I wasn’t interested in reading these. They were too crude for me. That is I think supposed to be the point, raw and gritty. It’s just not my cup of tea.

I received an incorrect edit digital proof an exchange for my honest review. I appreciate the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read it.

I’m not one for short stories but I just kept hearing really good things about this collection so I knew I had to give it a try. I listened to this on audio and I must say I really enjoyed it! Of course, like all short stories there were some stories that I liked more than the others but overall they were really interesting and compelling stories.

I think what works with this collection was that the author touched on subjects that we can all identify with everything from how social media affects us to the universal subject of relationships. I also liked how she touches on saying things that maybe we all have thought about but would never say. I personally connected with several stories and I liked how some had a nostalgic theme to them. Who hasn’t had that moment of looking back at their lives and seeing how much they have [or haven’t] changed?

This is a very smart collection of stories that everyone should read. They make you think and reminisce and at times make you question yourself as a person. This collection definitely makes me want to read more short stories. So do yourself a favor and dive into these wonderfully written stories they are well worth it.

This is a fantastic collection of short stories about people and their daily lives. Curtis Sittenfeld is an incredible writer and her characters are so realistic and fleshed out. I have enjoyed her writing since Prep so I was pleased to read these short stories. She's an author I'll always keep an eye out for to see what she's doing next.

After reading her debut novel Prep, back in 2005, I became a fast fan of Curtis Sittenfeld's work; she is one of my must-buy authors. Additionally, I have come to love well-written short stories; this combination had me giddy and I am happy to report that this may be some of her best writing yet.

In this collection, Sittenfeld tackles topics that feel extremely relevant - gender roles, relationship struggles, class division, social media - in the witty, sarcastic, yet also thoughtful and reflective, way that only she can; it's that midwestern spark that creates such relatable, authentic characters and storytelling and, this time around, she highlights the fears, insecurities and challenges of (mostly) middle-aged women who are reaching that point when we no longer feel as desirable as we used to and find solace in some of the most complicated spaces.

"Actually, what she remembers from their courtship is dinners at a not very good Mexican restaurant near campus, during which she could tell that he was trying to seem smart to her in exactly the way that she was trying to seem smart to him. Maybe for them that was passion?"

Even though I do not have children, one of my favorite stories is titled "Bad Latch;" the narrator encounters a women during a pre-natal yoga class then, later, in a post-natal breastfeeding support group, who is very smug and presents with a "better than" attitude. After some time has passed, the narrator encounters smug mom again but, this time, smug mom's circumstances have changed significantly and they end up building an authentic relationship.

My very favorite story of the collection is "Vox Clamantis in Deserto;" the narrator describes her early days at Dartmouth, as she becomes best friends with a young woman she idolized upon her arrival, and then goes on to reveal how their rather complicated relationship went on to inform some of her later decisions. Looking back on those experiences helps her acknowledge how grateful she is for the way in which her life has progressed, years later.

"It would be easy for me to be horrified by who I was more than twenty years ago, how ignorant, but I don’t see what purpose it would serve. I’m relieved to have aged out of that visceral sense that my primary obligation is to be pretty, relieved to work at a job that allows me to feel useful."

If you don't already read short stories, you should; I feel the same way about the work of Curtis Sittenfeld. This is a perfect introduction to both, if you're new to them; I'll be recommending You Think It, I'll Say It for years to come!

I really enjoyed this short story collection and I’m not really a “short story person” (whatever that is—most of the time I simply prefer to read novels.) None of the stories ended the way I thought they might and several of the characters will stay with me for quite some time. I think my favorite story was "The Prairie Wife," because who hasn't indulged in a little hate-reading?

I really wanted to like this. I did. I love Curtis Sittenfeld. I eagerly await each new book she puts out. But I just couldn't get into this short story collection. It was fine. Don't get me wrong. But I wasn't excited to read it. Nothing happened. Some stories (The Prairie Wife and Off the Record) were better than others (Do-Over and Volunteers Are Shining Stars). I just didn't care about the characters and the stories never really went anywhere.

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

You Think It, I’ll Say It is a smart, insightful collection of short stories by author Curtis Sittenfeld. Each story follows a protagonist, usually female, usually from the Midwest, whose lives seem fairly simple on the outside, but each have a small secret or insecurity chipping away inside of them. In one, a suburban mom reflects on a woman she knew from her college years and how her life is a lie. In another, a doctor thinks about how she met her husband and the weird detours that brought them back together.

I’ve only read one of Sittenfeld’s books, Eligible, but I deeply enjoyed it and wanted to keep an eye out for more of her work. When Netgalley emailed me about You Think It, I’ll Say It, I was in. I’ve really been enjoying more short story collections as of late and one by Sittenfeld sounded excellent.

And it really was excellent. Sittenfeld and her editing team have crafted smart, interesting, and surprising short stories that really make you think. The plots are smart and sharp and none of the stories lasted longer than they needed to.

The best part of the collection was the diversity of sexual preferences and romanticism. While most of these stories feature white women, Sittenfeld shows that no one person has the same kind of sex drive or romantic leanings. Characters are confirmed or heavily hinted to be gay, bisexual, asexual, or aromantic. Some don’t know what they want. Some are in the middle of discovering it.

As a Midwestern gal myself, I also appreciate that the vast majority of the stories take place in the Midwest. I’m delighted anytime our “flyover” states get the spotlight.

I would recommend this collection to pretty much anyone. It’s effortlessly readable and I think that everyone could get a little something out of it. However, I will say that it’s probably hits home more for readers in their late 30s and early 40s.

I gave it a 4/5 on my Goodreads account which translates to “I really liked it.”