Colin Barrett's sentences are lyrical and tough and smart, but there is something more here that makes him a really good writer. His stories are set in a familiar emotional landscape, but they give us endings that are new. What seems to be about sorrow and foreboding turns into an adventure, instead, in the tender art of the unexpected.

Language, structure, style - Colin Barrett has all the weapons at his disposal, and how, and he has an intuitive sense for what a short story is, and what it can do.

Colin Barrett is a young man in the town of the short story, but it’s fair to say he has the run of the place. This is a joyously fine collection, crackling with energy and verve, fit for the back pocket of anyone who loves a good story well told.

Magnificent...A stunning debut... The timeless nature of each story means this collection can - and will - be read many years from now.

Incredible… Human violence, beauty, brilliance of language – this book reminds you of the massive things you can do in short fiction.

Exciting and stylistically adventurous.

Should you be surprised that yet another superbly articulate and word-drunk writer has come out of Ireland? Perhaps not; but when that writer's work is as moving, as funny, as spectacularly evocative as Young Skins, you should be astonished, and amazed, and grateful. Some of the stories in this debut collection are amongst the best in the language. That a young writer possesses a talent this great is a cause for celebration, matched only by his ability to control and harness it. A minute after finishing this book I was itching to read Colin Barrett's next.

A new fabulous and forensic voice to sing out Ireland’s woes.

Colin Barrett is a writer of extraordinary gifts. I loved this compelling and utterly persuasive collection, the strongest debut I've read in some years.

[Barrett's] stories invite second readings that – the mark of really good work – seem to uncover sentences that weren't there the first time around... Throughout this extraordinary debut, but particularly in the excellent stories that bookend it, Colin Barrett is asking the right questions.

A debut short story collection that captures what it’s like to be young in rural Ireland in 2014.

The best collection we’ll read all year: a massive new talent, and stories that will make you yearn and nod and cry.

An exciting debut... Electric.

Barrett excels at scenarios rich in moral and emotional complications and his finely wrought sentences crunch and snap with hard-bitten lyricism.

Freakishly good... Barrett’s astonishingly mature stories windmill with violent abandon into our time.

How dare a debut writer be this good? Young Skins has all the hallmarks of an instant classic… His vision is sharp, his wit is sly, and the stories in this collection come alive with that ineffable thing – soul.

A triumph.

Barrett’s details shine like diamonds in a coal scuttle.

‘[Barrett] cuts across all kinds of boundaries of class and education to produce immensely tender portraits of living characters.

This is an exceptional debut, and one of the best collection of short stories that I have read in years.

An exciting debut

I don’t think I’ve ever read a better collection by somebody I had never heard of

A technically-assured collection that never disappoints

Roupenian’s tales from the frontline of modern relationships are perfect for an alternative Valentine’s Day display.

A collection of short stories which cover the same murky waters of attraction as "Cat Person".

There is always some anxiety following such a short, steep rise to recognition, but in this collection Roupenian lives up to those high expectations. The stories are wonderfully varied in execution, from realist to surreal, staying fresh while circling one primary concern: how men and women relate to one another, and how often that relationship can go wrong.

[A] sharp, powerful and uncomfortable debut collection of stories… [Roupenian] is always in narrative control.

Abrasive, painfully aware accounts of relationships in turmoil… You know you want this collection.

You Know You Want This seems to touch on conversations that the country has yet to have — often using horror and magical realism to illuminate the darker corners of our world.

In Look at Your Game, Girl and The Boy in the Pool, naïve female desire is so brilliantly and lushly evoked… [Biter] shows a flair for satire and comic timing… I look forward to Roupenian’s next book.

The best fiction leaves us thinking about it long after turning the last page, and with [Cat Person], author Kristen Roupenian established herself as a writer to watch. Her short-story collection, You Know You Want This, includes that story and others, all of which will have you talking about them long after finishing.

In her highly anticipated debut collection, the author behind the viral Cat Person story offers up a host of strange, fascinating, and downright delightful narratives you won't be able to stop talking about. Spanning a range of genres and topics, it is equal parts dark, uncomfortable, and funny.

Readers who are looking for more uncomfortably realistic renderings of awkward romantic encounters won’t be disappointed, but this collection is so much more than that, offering an array of biting (sometimes literally!) looks at the ways our most hidden perversions manifest in our lives. It’s a razor-sharp, often ruthless, never less than relentless examination of the way we are now. Scary, right? But you know you want it.

[You Know You Want This captures] the torturous and complicated justifications for untoward behaviour in the search for closeness and connection.

What unites the collection is less her [Roupenian’s] gender politics than her interest in the way fantasies become distorted, disappointing, even dangerous when they approach reality… narrative twist[s] changes the direction of a story and leads it somewhere new. Roupenian’s desire to have her moral and reject it too could be said to put a twist on the twist.

Roupenian remains rooted in realism, she gives pause by exposing the sinister side of sexuality, and one looks forward to seeing what she might accomplish with the novel form.

Kristen Roupenian's debut short stories fulfil all expectations… she infuses mundane reality with a thrilling layer of menace.

One of the most anticipated story collections of the year.

Violence, cruelty or misunderstanding are never far away in these 12 stories, which are by turns, unsettling, ruthless and often funny.

Walker’s laconic, Hemingway-esque prose style perfectly complements his low-key approach to his material: the matter-of-fact tone in which he recalls his most horrific experiences in Iraq makes them seem all the more horrible. It works equally well with deadpan humour.

Roupenian is a wizard of provocative, psychological fiction, exploring the dark side of the human psyche. Each of her short stories is terrifyingly relatable, making the reader fear something much more relevant than more supernatural horror stories.

A fascinating and repugnant series of stories, all tremendous examples of what this unsung hero of a literary form can do.

Roupenian’s wildly discomfiting new collection, You Know You Want This… is often wonderfully, if grotesquely, physical… This book isn’t bedtime reading.

These are stories that make you feel fascinated but repelled, scared but delighted, revolted but aroused.

You Know You Want This is an alarming but compelling book. Roupenian’s short stories, weaving together science fiction, confession and fantasy, are like infections spreading across the senses, blocking out everything except the compulsion to read on… Roupenian achieves something few other writers have: providing a balanced reflection on a very difficult subject.

There isn't enough ink on the internet to recommend this collection highly enough; I urge you to experience not only the viral hit ‘Cat Person' but the sheer abundance summarised in the ‘and other stories'… Her ability as a short story writer is absolute, and in her hands the form returns to what it is in the works of writers like Poe, Kafka, Shirley Jackson: they're provocations.