Sweet Revenge

I went into Sweet Revenge expecting another batch of revenge porn dressed up as fiction—you know, the kind that leaves you queasy and questioning your own morality. What I got was a surgical precision toolkit of morality bypasses, delivered with a smiley-face emoji’s detachment. Virtual Voice’s narration is the secret weapon here. The flat, artificial delivery isn’t just a gimmick; it’s a narrative wall between you and the messy emotions swirling in these stories. The lack of prosody forces you to focus on the ideas, not the catharsis—but oh boy, do those ideas stick. That said, the collection isn’t flawless. The opener, “The Landlord’s Last Tenant,” is so brutal it borders on cartoonish, and the twist lands like a mallet. Meanwhile, “The Influencer’s Apology Video” drags its feet with exposition, testing patience in a way the other stories never do. Still, the hits outweigh the misses. By the time the title story rolls around—where a scorned lover weaponizes TikTok in ways that feel uncomfortably prescient—you’re hooked, not just by the revenge, but by the unsettling question: *Would I do this?* The lack of a traditional moral compass is infuriating, and that’s exactly why it works.