Maggie Millner

The force of its seduction. That and the bagels.
You sally forth practicing your Kegels.

This is a love story told in a series of, well, couplets, making it more poetry than a novel. A married woman meets a woman and, within a very short span of time, ends her marriage and moves in with her. I can see why the author, poet Maggie Millner, chose that format for this story; the play on words is too delightful to resist. But the result is unsatisfying, with many of the rhymes feeling forced and show more brought back memories of the very bad poetry I wrote in middle school. The story skips along the surface of the story, never diving into what it felt like to leave a long relationship, or made itself feel like a unique story, even as the author included many details that put the story at a specific time, the place never felt more than generic. Kudos to the author for choosing a difficult challenge and I'm not sure if the format could have allowed for more substance. show less