"You're Ugly, Too," first published in 1989 in the New Yorker, was included inMoore's second collection of short stories, Like Life. The consensus of critics at the time of its publication was that it helped to cementMoore's growing reputation as a masterful short story writer known for her engaging wit.

However, several reviewers also noted that, while Moore's strengths were obvious and many, the wit expressed in her writing often came at the expense of an emotional depth to her characters, and her stories revealed a lack of thematic diversity: most of her stories in the new collection, like her previous work, were about middle-class, educated, single women looking for love.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune, the National Book Award winning author John Casey called the collection "a dazzler" with "witty (and sometimes wisecracking) narration [that is] wonderfully theatrical. ..." While Casey notes that all of Moore's characters...