4.75 stars rounded up for Goodreads.

I am utterly tickled over how much I loved this superbly written collection of simple short stories about day to day life.

Three children in their 20s return home for Christmas, an actress struggles to make it, a tech mogel and his ghostwriter edit his biography... Nothing groundbreaking happens. There isn't much of a plot. There are no catastrophic or grim or histrionic experiences. There is nothing but a needle plunged deep into the marrow of life.

It's as if I peeled back a curtain and observed unknowing people participating in their daily routine, with the added benefit of a deep glimpse into the innermost chambers of their minds and souls.

Cline's writing depicts the human condition with such intimacy I was mesmerized. Dazzled. Given access. I didn't need all those frivolous bells and whistles of plot and storyline, I just wanted to absorb myself in the way she observes and portrays people.

The fact that most of these stories are set in California and very few have to do with anything celebrity related made this an even more fantastic journey for me.

The commentary on the absurdity of humanity, the intricacy of human connection, the need to belong, awkwardness and complacency and melancholy and depression, wow just wow. Now this is a writer I will revisit again and again.