It has been a long while since I have reviewed a set of short stories. I am immensely happy that I chose to break my unintentional short story drought with Mark Victor Young’s incessantly charming “Awkward Stages .”

Young’s decision to depict Da Vinci’s Vetruvian Man on the cover is a gutsy one. It evokes a heralding of classic art, but also subliminally asks the reader to question what makes up the composition of the ideal human form. Therefore, when the reader gets to the first short story entitled “Crotch Dogs,” the overarching themes of the goal of perfection and emotional superiority are already lurking.