This issue of Philadelphia Stories highlights the prize winners for the journal's annual fiction contest. While all the finalists' stories printed here are well-written, none of them grabbed me. Perhaps it was the subject matter - a gay man, and his partner, visit his ex-wife as she dies from cancer; a teenage girl is manipulated into an eating disorder by her new step-sister in a blended family; a woman ruminates on the day her husband murdered their gay son. It felt like all the stories chose a freighted topic own purpose rather than anything personal. I'm not saying these are fake or trite stories, but they felt forced. Similarly, none of the poetry layered in between the stories was memorable.

2 bones!! ( )