The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

I'm back at the office, so between losing my commute time and having a tiny human who needs to be on me every second that I'm home, my time has just gotten a lot tighter. I'll try to keep this short.

This was an excellent collection of stories, most of them, in a roundabout way (if not plainly) about sex/sexuality and the hypocrisy of Good Christian Folks around it. Not a weak link here; my favorites were “Not-Daniel” and “Peach Cobbler” (and the surprise throwback to the “Peach Cobbler” daughter in “Instructions for Married Christian Husbands” even though it wasn't a favorite story). I wasn't crazy about “Jael,” but I listened to the audio and was like halfway into the story before I realized that there were two narrators, so I think I probably missed what Philyaw was trying to do there. Some grief and heartbreak around losing loved ones, to death and to dementia, handled with care. Lot of infidelity here, multiple instances of second families, if that's not something you're cool with reading.