Short story collections are one of the best ways to sample an author's writing skills and test your interest in their longer titles. WILD FAILURE captures moments in the lives of these women as they do their best to get by in a world that labels them by their sexual preferences. Zoe Whittall does a great job of pulling readers into the moment quickly and giving them a glance of how their differences affect their immediate surroundings, give us an ending that will set better with some more than others, but the point is well taken. Ten stories, ten life chapters, ten snapshots that caused this reader to visit Whittall's back library. That's what short stories do best, stir interest and fill gaps between series reading.

I always enjoy Zoe Whittall's books and could not wait to read her short story collection WILD FAILURE. It delivers. The 10 stories in this collection offer a range of characters who make mistakes and mess things up, but feel like people who could be the local skate park or live in your neighborhood, and so on. I pre-ordered this book after reading the second short story and can't wait to use this in one of my fiction classes this fall.

Really enjoyed this collection of strange but lovely short stories! They all had a very wry sense of humor, while still dealing some very real queer experiences .I was especially fond of the titular "Wild Failure" and "I'm Still Your Fag".

Wild Failure by Zoe Whittall is a phenomenal debut collection of ten powerful, feminist, and queer short stories.
What a powerful and compelling book this was.
I truly enjoyed each story and was hooked immediately.

Thank You NetGalley and Ballantine Books for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

A super interesting anthology that hooked me in and left me unable to stop reading. All of these stories were morbidly fascinating in a way that I couldn’t put it down until I devoured it all. This book is morbid, often horrifying, and a great collection of messy, dark queer stories

I learned about Zoe Whittall’s short story collection Wild Failure through her publisher on social media. I was really excited to receive an advance copy for review. While the stories are varied in nature, I was hoping for a more central theme to help tie everything together. While I think there is a deep sense of cleverness to many of her concepts, they lacked on execution. I personally don’t enjoy reading stories focused on trauma and was immediately put off by the opening story “Half Pipe.” The story concept I was most looking forward to was “Wild Failure,” a tale of an agoraphobic woman and her wilderness hiker partner, but I found the story anticlimactic, and really needing more background and buildup. I think many of Whittall’s ideas have potential, but I don’t think I will be returning to her writing anytime soon. Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for providing me with this short story collection in exchange for my honest option.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Zoe Whittall, and Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

I always forget how much I adore short story collections until I pick up one after a long time!! This was an absolute treat that I devoured in less than 24 hours. Don't get me wrong, Whittall definitely deals with a lot of serious and tough themes throughout each story, and these definitely do not have happy endings. However, each story was perfectly crafted in terms of pacing and description. I left each one wanting MORE while also being so satisfied with what I had just read, which is hard to do! Whittall also included the perfect number of stories that were easily readable and not too long. I will definitely be checking out other work by Whittall because she did an excellent job of writing complex characters, especially queer ones. There was authenticity in this collection that I was pleasantly surprised by, and I know that several of these stories I will be thinking about for days to come.

Ten thoughtful and often lyrical short stories that explore the lives and loves of queer women. These see the women through ups and downs, confronting aging, homophobia, relationships, and most of all themselves. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Put this on your bedside and read one a day.

Zoe Whittall's debut story collection Wild Failure is made up of ten stories highlighting women and most, if not all have a queer component. The first story, "Half Pipe" may be my favorite, tracking the aftermath of a sexual assault of a high school-aged girl. In others, we meet a couple on one last road trip before their planned breakup, two writers on a book tour, a woman who dreams about being killed, and a woman reflecting back on her time as a stripper. As with many short story collections, some stories resonated more than other, but this is a strong debut and I look forward to what Whittall writes next, as some of the stories here I would have loved to have sit with longer.

Thank you to Ballantine Books for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

Lovely collection of short stories exploring the intricacies of coming-of-age, relationships, and exploring queerness. It's been forever since I've read a short story collection and thoroughly enjoyed these. I will say, I would have appreciated a content warning for the first story, as it was quite graphic. The present tense, matter-of-fact narration came through in all of the stories.. While I appreciate that it stayed consistent, it wasn't my favorite and distracted me from the novel itself.

Whew this was heavy. I liked it, but I felt like I needed to sit with my discomfort after a few of these stories. These vignettes into the lives of different (mostly queer) women left me feeling like I wanted more, but that I also didn’t. Often dark, and emotionally messy, these were interesting stories of complicated feelings. I won’t lie - I’m glad I read this in the summer and not during dark and dreary winter evenings.

A good collection of shorts focused on women. Super quick read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is my third read by the author. I found her novel Spectacular decidedly less than, but really enjoyed her next one, The Fake. This collection landed somewhere in the middle of that for me.
Not because of the quality or writing, which is quite high, but because of how similar the stories read. Rather amusing, considering how much this collection is all about diversity representation.
The diversity represented here is primarily queer. Tale after tale of a dysfunctional relationship, featuring queer characters. The characters are often well into their 30s, yet profoundly unable to get their sh*t together. Their immaturity is almost Gen Z in a way, though also very heavily of the more current Gens.
The writing, as I mentioned, is so very good, and Whittall can do some great emotional engagement when she chooses to (some of it particularly tragic), but one screwed up character after another can leave a reader craving a bit more thematic diversity to go along with the talent.
Still, it's a solid read, one that goes by very quickly. I read the entire book in one afternoon sitting from about 2 to 5. Toward the end, the collection gets somewhat more ambitious. Thanks Netgalley.

3.75/5 stars for Storygraph, rounded up to 4/5 for Goodreads.

This was an ARC that I received ages ago. A reading slump has put me severely behind in all of my ARC reads, so I’m slowly catching up.

Anyway, Wild Failure is the first book I’ve ever read of Whittall, and honestly? I’m really glad I picked this up. Whittall has a way of writing that hooked me in and held me hostage, even if the short story wasn’t my favorite. I found myself wanting more of these stories, and I hope that Whittall takes some of them and lengthens them into full-length novels.

There isn’t a whole lot I can say about this collection of short stories other than I had a lot of fun reading it and, despite the fact that I’m on SSRIs (I can’t cry… iykyk), I got misty-eyed during some of the scenes. I think… I think that says a lot :)

Wild Failure is perfect for anyone who likes unapologetically queer and feminist storytelling, especially if they don’t tend to shy away from heavy topics.

Thank you to Ballatine Books (Random House) & NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I had mixed feelings about this collection of queer short stories. It was an up-and-down collection, with some really stellar stories, and some which didn’t quite land for me.

Whittall is a good writer, but quite a few of the stories simply did not manage to capture my attention or remain terribly memorable after I read them. Some, however, are really very good; the best in the collection, I think, is the opener “Half Dome.” Some of the entries felt like they didn’t quite work in the format they were written -- the closing story, for instance, is formatted as a transcript of a podcast interview, but doesn’t read as particularly conversational, or like the way that anyone would actually talk.

In general, if you like queer literary fiction short stories, this is probably worth the read; it wasn’t my favorite, but I’ll certainly consider reading more of the author’s work.

Content Warnings: Unhealthy Relationships, Assault (Physical, Sexual), Mental Health (OCD, Agoraphobia, Anxiety, Panic Attacks), Miscarriage

For the sex repulsed, many stories feature graphic sexual content.

Whittall's collection of short stories succeeds at representing numerous queer identities and types of relationships, as well as complex and messy characters. However, when judging a collection, there are always going to be one or more stories you may like. I tend to rate collections based on how many I liked and I remembered after reading. Based on that, I'm rating this as a middling collection. There were really only 2 stories that stuck with me: "A Patch of Bright Flowers" and "Murder at the Elm Street Collective House." "A Patch of Bright Flowers" exploration of writing, aging, and lesbian dynamics was great, and "Murder at the Elm Street Collective House" offered both an intriguing story and a good critique of the True Crime genre.

I don't read a lot of short stories -- I tend to get too focused on where the plot will go in a short number of pages and don't let my self just enjoy it. But I gave this collection a try and enjoyed it. The language throughout was lovely. It was wonderfully detailed and lyrically. You get the interiority of the narrators in a way that shows as opposed to tells you who they are.

I likely some of the stories more than others beginning with the first one, Half-Pipe which had a terrific ending. I also really liked A Patch of Bright Flowers and the final one Murder at the Elm Street Collective House was a solid choice to end on.

So I knew going these would be short stories but I like that from time to time. These however were just average for me for the most part. The author does have a good writing style, the content just didn’t grab me. The cover is absolutely beautiful!

Will add to my monthly roundup on social and will tag afterward.

Given the reviews on Goodreads, I thought this was going to be epic. However, short stories are a hit or miss for me. 90% of these short stories were misses, and that made me really not vibe with the few I enjoyed.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This collection of short stories was a fun, if a bit of a neutral read for me. I very much enjoyed that all of the stories feature queer characters and have a feminist bent to them. The stories address issues of mental health, trauma, aging, and the general impacts of living as a queer person at various points in one's life. While I enjoyed the scope of the collection, I was less enthralled by the writing style which felt a bit too stilted for me and rendered a few of the stories not very memorable or as impactful as it could have been. However, this is more down to my personal reading taste in terms of prose; I wasn't familiar with Whittall's work until this. However, if the writing style is to your liking, this is a solid, thought-provoking collection.