Incendiary Girls by Kodi Scheer

Good morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Kodi Scheer's debut, Incendiary Girls, a collection of shorts that are (as the copy reads) "...inspired by science, medicine, and the power of healing with a magical twist."

This is a bizarre collection of pieces to be sure. My usual approach to any short story collection is to read straight through in order, just as I would chapters in a novel. This time, though, I mixed it up a bit. We have company in this week so shorts were definitely the perfect read but with time in mind I skipped around and read out of order. And so the story "Miss Universe" was one of the first I read rather than the third in order. This is a brutal little tale about Miss Universe competitors literally tearing apart the competition! I was surprised when I read it, but as I progressed further through the collection I realized it was indeed a perfect fit.

Other stories include "Transplant" where a woman adopts a new religion in the hopes that her prayers will be answered. "Fundamental Laws of Nature" finds a woman facing the same potential death sentence that took her mother but she finds solace in imagining that her daughter's horse is in fact her reincarnation (the dead mother's, that is). In "No Monsters Here" a woman whose husband is off fighting in Afghanistan begins finding pieces of him throughout her home and begins to fear the worst. "Salt of the Earth" was probably my favorite story in the bunch. In this tale a town is plagued by a love virus!

With Incendiary Tales I think Scheer has proven that she is a wonderful talent! Each of the stories is rich in emotion. They're quirky and a bit dark - depending on how you approach some of them - but they're also the kind of stories that grab hold of you from their first lines. I definitely recommend the collection not only to readers who enjoy a bit of an odd twist in their reading, but to readers who like to mull over and ponder the deeper meanings in stories that obviously deal with loss, fear, and love.

To see more stops on the tour be sure to visit the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Kodi Scheer, you can visit her here on the web. You can also follow her on Twitter.