Short story anthology | The Book Drifter

For the Love of Murphy

Genre: Romance Anthology (Sweet)
Release Date: March 17, 2014
Keywords: Romance, Anthology, Sweet, Murphy’s Law, Short Stories

Description: They say love conquers all, but whoever “they” are, must not have heard of Murphy’s Law — whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

These five tales of sweet, accidental romance prove Cupid’s arrows are a lot tougher than they seem, and sometimes it pays to be unlucky.

No Wrong Turns by Lisa A. Adams
Falling For You by Michelle Ziegler
Coffee and Cufflinks by Annabelle Blume
A Slippery Slope by Rebecca Hart
The Shamrock Incident by London Saint James

Buy Links

Print: Createspace | Amazon

Ebooks: Amazon | Amazon UK | Barnes and Noble | Smashwords

For the Love of Murphy is the perfect collection of short stories that you should read on your daily commute to work or while you are waiting in a long queue. It has all the characteristics that might improve your mood. The stories are exactly as the title suggests, a take on Murphy’s Law, ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong’.

From nearly getting married to the wrong friend and then being jilted at the altar to rebelling against your parents, leaving home and immediately losing your wallet half way down the street is what all the stories are about. Every character is believable and either we are them or we know of people who are quite similar.

You will invariably do something silly or get a bump on your forehead in front of a very interesting and date-able guy like in London Saint James’s The Shamrock Incident.

Olivia of Coffee and Cufflinks has a high powered job and she meets this wonderful guy everyday at the same coffee shop. They know nothing about each other, other than their coffee orders and her love of expensive bottled water. How fate brings them together after a series of disasters proves that once everything that can have gone wrong has gone wrong, something will go right!

I will not go into great details of each story as that would spoil the fun of a short story. I believe all of these authors have a lot of potential and I hope they’ll write more in future.

These stories are extremely short and just right. They are quite predictable as well if you are a champion romance reader. However if you do read a lot of romance then you must love happily ever-afters as well. I would recommend that you read For the Love of Murphy if you are after something sweet and uncomplicated to read. If you are having a moment when you don’t want to be logical and practical read this anthology. However if you are after stories with a lot of complications in plot and denouement I would suggest you don’t read it because it would be an injustice to these authors, the stories and to you.

However, when I finished the book I wanted to read a few more stories like these. These are times that I miss paper books, you can’t flick the pages to the best bits. E-books have made life a lot easier and cheaper for debut authors and PR’s to get the word around but at the cost of the reader not being able to flick pages!

This blog post is part of a blog tour and I received a free advanced review copy of the book to review. All opinions are my own and I wasn’t influenced or asked to write it.

Buy: Amazon Paperback | Kindle | Barnes & Nobles

Synopsis:

“The promise implicit in an anthology is that it aspires to present something different, unexpected” Joyce Carol Oates (Introduction to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories) From the classical form of ‘The Weight of a Feather’, first published by The Huffington Post (2013), to the suggestive allegory of ‘The Leopard and The Lizard’, this collection of short stories by South African author Judy Croome is an ideal mix of the familiar and the startling. These vibrant slices of life testify to the mysterious and luminous resources of the human spirit. Whether feeling the harrowing emotion in ‘The Last Sacrifice’ or the jauntiness of ‘Jannie Vermaak’s New Bicycle’, the reader will delight in a plethora of stories that cross boundaries to both challenge and entertain with their variety.

Review:

Judy Croome is a fantastic storyteller. She takes the reader on a journey through life and its various nuances. All of Croome’s stories have a message that the reader can take away, the sign of a brilliant short story. If a story makes an impact on you then, you are more likely to repeat it to your friends and thus spread its popularity. The anthology starts of with ‘The Weight of a Feather’, which deals with the sudden milestones of growing up. Learning curves which are not necessarily forgivable.

In a flowing but often brutal style the characters and their tangible emotions leap off their pages. ‘One can feel like a voyeur peeking vicariously into a person’s life, or be swept into a nightmare.’ as one Goodreads reviewer wisely states. Even stories like The Biter Bit and The Negotiation, short as they are, reverberate with your conscience a long time later.

The stories in this anthology are something you would read in a newspaper with your morning cup of tea, or the last thing you read on the train and often think about it at work. It is very easy to imagine what the characters might have done next after the story ends. Such is the beauty and poignancy of the authors writing and the versatility of the genre.

About the author:

Judy Croome lives and writes in Johannesburg, South Africa. Shortlisted in the African Writing Flash Fiction 2011 competition, Judy’s short stories and poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, such as the Huffington Post and the University of the Witwatersrand’s Itch Magazine. Her books “The Weight of a Feather & Other Stories” (2013), “a Lamp at Midday” (2012) and “Dancing in the Shadows of Love” (2011) are available. Judy loves her family, cats, exploring the meaning of life, chocolate, cats, rainy days, ancient churches with their ancient graveyards, cats, meditation and solitude. Oh, and cats. Judy loves cats (who already appear to have discovered the meaning of life.) She is currently researching child murders for her next novel and you can visit Judy on www.judycroome.com or join her on Twitter @judy_croome , Facebook and Goodreads.

Book Trailer