Hello revdbob . How are you doing? My name's Charlie and I'm here to celebrate your WDC anniversary month with a review of your short story, "Last Stop" . Thanks for sharing with us and giving us a chance to review!

This is an interesting little story told through the perspective of three different people on a bus. I thought it was cool how you separated them by the font stylizing, although I'll admit, it took me until the third one before it clicked. I was like, okay, what is up with the fonts here? Duh.

I liked the suspense that built up as we realized that Bold Italics was about to pull something. You wrote this almost 9 years ago, but it's more relevant now than ever. I know a lot of people are nervous now on buses, subways, trains, and planes. Any means of transportation where you're stuck with other people can be a little bit nerve-wracking with the current state of the world. I also thought it pulled at the emotional heartstrings when Plain Italics was talking about all the things s/he was going to get the grandkids for Christmas. We view this as such a happy time of year, so it's sad that the gifts will never get delivered.

The one thing that bothered me was that the voices between Normal Font and Bold Italics weren't different enough, in my opinion. They're two completely different people, but they have near the same voice. They both use double, triple, quadruple negatives in almost every sentence, so I had to keep making sure I knew which person's perspective we were looking through.

The other thing is the last line:

“Just shut up, will ya, kid? Here’s a whole buck; buy yerself the whole machine. But shut up!”

I thought this was the guy asking for money. Why would he be giving someone else money now? Is this the perspective of someone completely new on the bus?

Other than that, I thought this was a cool little story. I'd like to see where things go with the three of them. Thanks again for sharing with us!



My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .