Enjoyed this book. Kept me interested all the way through. Would recommend to a fellow reader.  Love the cover.

Use Your Imagination! by Kris Bertin is a collection of short stories about identity, perspective and narration.

While not a fan of the cover or title, I did find the contents more than compensated for any minor disappointments in that regard.  Quite a few gems within this collection that compliment Bertin's direct and readable style very well.   Even the stories that didn't quite hit the mark with me were well written.

With thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

I was pulled in by the description for this book, but was not a fan of the cover!  Thankfully I didn't let the cover keep me from reading this collection of stories.  I do love a good cover though, but because the book was published by Nimbus Publishing I couldn't let it go by.
Recent discussions with patrons at the bookstore where I work have centered around how we become who we are through the stories we tell and the stories told about us.    We wondered  how much we are influenced by how others see us and how that changes as we get older.
This book crossed my path at just the right time.  I love it when a book does that!  
This collection of short stories, by award winning author Kris Bertin, gave me lots to talk about with customers and I have gladly recommended to short story lovers.
I thoroughly enjoyed most of the stories.  Only one left me flat.

This was a great collection of short stories.  There were one or two that were not as good as the others, but that is to be expected with a collection of short stories.  Overall, this was an enjoyable and quick read!

This is a collection of short stories surrounding how the narratives we tell affect our identities, and how an unreliable narrator can warp history. They each surround a person telling somebody else’s story and how it interlinks with their own. As we never get a first hand perspective from these people, we have to take the narrators’ word for it and consequently, the book is steeped in intrigue. 

Admittedly, some of the stories fell short for me – particularly the one about the two comedian friends, one of whom has cancer, and the one about the self-help guru. The first one fell short, because I felt it was attempting to make a bad situation exciting and edgy, with the bumblebee and the cake, and it didn’t feel realistic to me. The story about the guru felt stale, and again edgy without reason. The part where Grant removes Turbo’s prosthetic hands felt unnecessary as it did nothing to further the plot. This was also the story that took me the longest to read and I felt, the way it was told, it became anti-climatic when it ought to have been shocking. 

On the other hand, there were some strong stories within the collection. I would say the one set in the prison was my favourite as we witness firsthand what a master manipulator can be capable of. The use of a letter from the creative writing teacher at the beginning is incredibly effective, as it is showing how the main character can affect the people around him. 

I also thoroughly enjoyed the story about the arrival of a new couple in a small town, because it had a Twin Peaks air about it. The original residents take pride in their town, and feel the new people are a threat. However, they are eventually sucked in by the woman’s charms, often to detrimental effect. 

Bertin does not sugarcoat his writing, there are no flowery descriptions, he gets straight to the point. In some stories this worked well, making them feel gripping and tense. In others, though, it made them feel choppy and disjointed. Furthermore, some of his choice of language is distasteful. The example in the guru story mentioned above is one that made me uncomfortable. In the story about Cowan, a young boy named Holbrook is described as having “one of those deformed arms like a baked potato pushing out of his shoulder”, which is both ignorant and offensive. 

Had these instances of ignorance surrounding disability been omitted or reworded, I would have given the book a solid three stars, as some of the stories do work well. However, because of the inclusion of these particular phrases, and the fact that some stories were quite a bit weaker, I chose to give the book as a whole a two stars.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my  honest review.   Thank you NetGalley.

i wish the book was available as a kindle book, rather than protected pdf.    but that's  not necessarily the author's thought. 

the stories were interesting.. some fell short for me, but others were great.

Kris is very talented. I blew thru this, but found it uneven (which is probably my issue, not the author's). The stories are creative, well-crafted, and interesting. I didn't connect with all of them, but that doesn't take away from the obvious skill used to write them.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!

BTW, I'm not a fan of the protected PDF format, which I find to be clunky. Although, I understand the value of it from a publisher and author standpoint. Please consider mobi in the future.