Review: Short story: "Natural Selection" by Elin Hilderbrand

Natural Selection by Elin Hilderbrand
Published September 2024 via Amazon Original Stories

It's supposed to be their first vacation together, but just before Sophia and her new boyfriend board a flight to the Galapagos Islands together, he gets a call—and suddenly she's on a solo vacation to a place she didn't really want to go in the first place, with people she wouldn't befriend in her normal New York life. And suddenly she is not sure what is going on in her relationship, or how she's going to get through this holiday...

I haven't actually read any of Hilderbrand's books, though of course I've seen them in many a bookstore and many a library. This is a quick read of a story, only about fifty pages—I read it on the way to and from the gym. There aren't a lot of surprises here, but it's satisfying; I sort of love how much of a snob Sophia is about the boat when the package tour first starts. Without spoiling anything, I'll say that the phone call near the end is interesting—nice that it's very level-headed, but also clear that...oh, there's an extent to which some collateral damage is expected and treated as though it doesn't matter, I guess. Raises some interesting questions about whether one person's experience trumps another's—or, maybe more to the point, what you do when one person's experience trumps another's but the second person, you know, still has an experience.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.