★★★☆☆ – I had a good time!

A pleasantly quotidian glimpse of a very strange alternate present. The sort of thing made for anthologies. It ultimately goes in a fun, non-obvious direction, which I appreciate – the sort of direction you might (stereotypically, perhaps, but in this case correctly) imagine is more expected to come about in an anthology written exclusively by women. Lovely to read something by Chown outside of Big Finish!

The story is let down by an all-too-abrupt ending and a lingering feeling that neither the “hook” nor the characters were quite compelling enough – it spends many of its precious words on worldbuilding the same few aspects somewhat redundantly, leaving the more personal elements underexplored.

Until the final couple of pages I was certain that Annie was going to boink her shade. Deeply thankfully, that did not turn out to be the case. I couldn’t have taken it after Kate Orman’s (probably intentionally) eminently unpleasant psychosexual onslaught.