4.5 ⭐️’s

what beautifully written pieces of literature. i’ll never not enjoy something written by Olivie Blake i fear.

the short stories held various descriptions of love and the power it holds over us while also showing the things humans (and non humans) will do in the name of love (‘: she dives into a multitude of topics that bring out all of the emotions while still adding in doses of humor.

each story felt like the perfect length for me. while i connected with some more than other, i found myself enraptured with each story at some point.

I am in love with Olivie Blake's writing! She has the most beautiful writing style. This book is a fabulous collection of short stories rooted in fantasy, fairy tales, and magical realism.

I highly recommend this book to all my friends!

A captivating collection of short stories that blend fantasy, romance, and intrigue. With its diverse range of characters and settings, from magical bridges to multiverse assassins, this book offers a unique and enchanting reading experience. Blake's masterful storytelling and rich, imaginative worlds make "Januaries" a must-read for fans of fantasy and short fiction, promising new discoveries with each reread.

A fantastic collection of short stories that all feel a bit magical to read. I loved the first story the most in this. This collection definitely felt like reading some fairytales and though the collection features modified fairytales and such, it's a good time to read and one I'd definitely recommend for everyone to pick up!

Release Date: October 15,2024

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group | Tordotcom for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Olivie Blake is a magical writer. This was such a pleasant delight. All short stories was perfect for reading during fall. Even though this was a collection of stories I had a great time reading this.

This book is a quirky, captivating mash-up of adult fairytales, speculative fiction, and poetry. The whole collection has this unique charm—it’s part modern fairytale, part magical realism, and fully character-driven, with stories that bring together the magical and the mundane in unexpected ways. Blake’s imagination really shines as she pulls together everything from fairies and foodie demons to sentient houses and even fountain nymphs, making them feel surprisingly relatable.

The stories are centered around relationships, from love stories to dark, twisted tales of revenge. Blake has a knack for blending humor and depth, which makes the book both fun and meaningful. Her writing feels poetic but grounded, with scenes that make you laugh and others that hit right in the feels. Each story is unpredictable, with plenty of satirical jabs and heartfelt moments woven in.

Overall, this book is a joy to read if you’re into stories that feel fresh and surprising, with characters that stay with you. Blake brings a bit of everything to the table—myth, magic, and modern relationships—and wraps it all in her unique, poetic style.

Olivie Blake does it again! She has such a unique style of writing that feels like it braids into your soul. And the Januaries is no different. This collection of stories is more than I could ever ask for from this amazing author! If you are new to Olivie Blake this is a great place to start!

3 ⭐️

“Choose carefully, for no matter what you choose, you will most certainly pay more than you know”

Honestly this book is quite difficult to review and rate. I absolutely adored the majority of the stories in the first 2/3’s of this book. I love love love Olivie Blake’s writing. I just feel like the last third of the book really took a turn that I didn’t personally enjoy. There were some stories I did like though.

There are some beautiful stories in here. Theres great variety, and most of them have great deeper meanings. The characters and plot lines were generally really well done and I could connect with them for the most part. The first still remained one of the most memorable and beautiful for me, even as I read the others.

I would definitely recommend this. Some of the stories get quite overly sexual which I think probably could use a warning for. It is an adult book tho. I just personally preferred the other stories, I thought they were more interesting.

Super appreciative to NetGalley to have received the arc for this book and would definitely recommend reading even just for the first 2/3 of the stories!! Such a fun read.

🫶🏻💕

Man, I love Olivie Blake's writing, and her collection of short stories is no exception! These stories were whimsical, magical, emotional, twisted, and fun.

My favorites were:

🩸 Sucker for Pain - A young girl becomes ward to a mother and son Witch duo. As an adult, she's not sure if she's in love with the son, or if she's just been manipulated her whole life into thinking she should be. I WISH THIS WERE A FULL BOOK it was so good.

👩‍🍳 Sous Vide - A young woman gets a job cooking for a demon. Even though she's not supposed to interact with the demon, she ends up relying on them to work through her romantic relationship with her older professor.

🌌 Chaos Theory - Five women caught in different relationships, living in different times and spaces, find out they are interconnected in a way that will change them forever. This is another one that absolutely could have been its own book, but it was the most substantive and longest of the stories in this collection.

⏳ A Year in January - A young woman finds a roommate off Craigslist who may or may not be from this world. It was a moving account of navigating being bipolar and the effect that has on friendships.

Most stories really worked for me, but a couple didn't. For instance, I should have connected with Monsterlove, a stream-of-consciousness story about motherhood and maintaining one's identity without falling victim to the pressure of perfection. But it was just too chaotic and cerebral for me to find its rhythm.

This collection fits right into and compliments Blake's body of work. I think it would be great for established fans of hers, as well as people just trying her out. I can't wait for her next book!

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

This is the first short story collection I've completed, and I really enjoyed it! In all fairness, I'd read just about anything that Olivie Blake writes, but still.

The collection is organized by seasons, with each season featuring a few individual stories. The stories varied in length and complexity, but were all grounded in themes of magic and love. The range of writing style between stories was wildly different as well - some stories were more abstract and emotional, while some were more concrete and witty.

My personal favorites were as follows:
The Audit: Very thought-provoking, kind of Black Mirror-esque
Fates and Consequences: This was "LOL" funny, I cackled repeatedly
Chaos Theory: Amazing plotline convergence, I was mind-blown when all POVs came together
A Year in January: Unexpectedly emotional

Thank you to Tor for the advanced copy for review! All opinions are my own.

This collection is a wonderful example of an author who can move between short stories and novels with ease and still evoke gorgeous imagery and intense emotions. I've not always found it the case, but Blake is a superb writer and storyteller.

I’ve wanted to really love Olivie Blake’s work for a while now, but there’s always been something that’s kept me from really enjoying it - plot points, misplaced whimsy, just something. Not so with Januaries - this was a delightful, magical, funny set of short stories. Sometimes I felt like the characters in one story were too like the ones in another, but Blake does really solid work here with creating very different worlds and plots throughout.

4.5 - Oh olivie, the way you write just gets me every time. A collection of short stories, and most I absolutely loved, with each one touching on different topics and themes. The way she grouped the stories with the seasons really flowed well and made the book feel more cohesive. Very few other authors really make me question love, die, sexuality, morals, growth like Olivie. Truly such beautiful writing.

Januaries is a set of short stories, which Olivie has called her "Eras Tour" of her writing throughout her life. Some were previously self published, others are brand new. Each short story is grouped into one of the four seasons, and each season follows a different set of themes. As always, Olivie tackles the topics of life, death, love, morality, goodness and evil, and many others. She intertwines these themes with magical creatures and fantasy worlds, making each character and lesson come to life. I found myself reflecting on many parts of my life and my own life and death, as well as the importance of love in my life, as I often find myself doing when reading Olivie's books.

This was such a homage to Olivie's writing and talent. I loved to reflect on her writing throughout the years and her self published work and how this era has come to an end. If you are an Olivie fan or just love beautiful writing with beautiful themes, I definitely recommend this one! Olivie Blake I love you forever.

Thank you to Tor Books for the free advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

This is a dream of a book for those who like both short stories and fantasy. Somehow every story drew me in, and I was absorbed by the characters involved. I love the themes of death and life and all of the other things that go with a good fantasy. It’s emotional and fascinating and entertaining from start to finish.

I loved some of the stories and just vibing with some others. Some seemed like just a concept chapter for a full book. I absolutely loved the first story and none of the later ones lived up to that one. I think a lot of these could be full books. Like I said, it seemed like a book full of random ideas that never quite made a full book page count. Some of them it feels like your thrust into the middle of the story. Some make you go "huh?'. It was interesting. Olivie's writing is also interesting sometimes cause she has such a broad vocabulary and some words seem like they're only used because they're more fancy. This is a hard book to rate because everything story was so different. I did see a review on Goodreads of someone who rated each individual story. That might have been a better way to review this book. I'm 50/50 on if I would recommend this book. For short stories, some of them seemed too long. When my kindle says "59 minutes to end of chapter", that's not a short story to me.

Olivie Blake's books are sometimes hit-or-miss for me, and this book of short stories was definitely a hit. My favorite were the ones that were clearly adapted from fairytales. Each one of these stories drew me in, and unlike a lot of anthologies I read, there wasn't a decline in quality from one story to another.

Some of these stories have been previously published, but they were all new to me. This collection is so, so good– I never knew what to expect next and never wanted them to end, even though they broke my heart again and again. Every universe Blake creates is infused with such interesting magical places and beings, and characters who are so intensely relatable they might make you doubt having any original thoughts or emotions. Which can certainly ease the burden of loneliness, the common thread running through this collection.

Familiar stories and legends (such as Frankenstein, Greek mythology, our unfortunate political landscape) are given new life in Blake’s perfect cocktail of morbidity, longing, and morally gray characters you can’t help but be kind of obsessed with.

These were some highlights for me:
-A pair of lovers find themselves in a game of killing each other over and over and over
-Women who are literal nightmares
-Women who relentlessly make space for themselves in worlds that fear/reject them (AKA revenge!! A lot of revenge! So much delicious revenge.)
-(*mild spoiler*) Thelma and Louise-ing out of a religious oligarchy controlled by Jesus Chicken
-The inevitability of love (aw)

In these stories you will find probably the most lonely creatures ever. When they break their curses, find a reason to live, or get super sick revenge, we feel our loneliness easing a bit, too.

Thank you Tor and NetGalley for the eARC!

if there’s one thing olivie blake is gonna do, its write short stories that evoke all of the emotions in me that i’d rather not acknowledge. each story had an element of despair and hopelessness, yet a strand of love pulled the protagonists to the potential beginnings of a better life. so artfully done.

i go into olivie’s books with the expectation that they will be five star reads for me but this was otherworldly.

my absolute favorites were sucker for pain (OMG???? i need more of them IMMEDIATELY!!), the animation games (i love it in fairytales, i love it now), preexisting conditions (nicolibby?! is that you??), how to dispel friends and curse people (so full of love and wonder. so cute), sous vide (you go girl!!), sensual tales for carnal pleasures (again. even better on the second read), and chaos theory (so well done i barely have the words…. the killing of someone you couldve been fated to love but theres such an infinitesimally small likelihood of it working out that youre resigned to killing them for the greater good……… i could read novels upon novels of this)

i realize now that those ^^ are half of the book. that’s how good it is. my absolute favorites that i couldn’t bear to not list are literally half of the stories.

five stars, as if there could be any other option. a gorgeous gorgeous piece of literature.

Januaries:⁣
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Thank you @macmillan.audio #MacAudio2024 and @torbooks for my gifted copies!⁣
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The easiest way to describe Januaries by Olivie Blake as a whole is magical and whimsy. ⁣
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My favorites:⁣
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The Wish Bridge:⁣
What a freaking way to start a short story collection. This was absolutely beautiful and heart wrenching. This made me swoon like OUABH. Truly whimsical for me. ⁣
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Sucker For Pain:⁣
Very Interview with a Vampire. I’ll never skip a vampire or witch story. Not sorry. Loved this one and the finality. ⁣
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How to Dispel Friends and Curse People:⁣
I loved this one so much. Give me all the grumpy/sunshine basically in magical form. Persistent and silly, absolutely adorable. ⁣
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Fates And Consequences: ⁣
I could not stop cackling. Very Masters of Death coded. We get Hades and Persephone, so I was so excited for their little cameo. ⁣
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Sous Vide:⁣
This had me cackling. It was so snippy and I cannot stop giggling. Some gems: “(Her libertine youth, her manic freedom, the restless intellect that had driven her to art and poetry, which was now driving her to poverty and madness, just as it had done to all the artists and poets before.” “So, what do you do with the hungry? Ignore them, if you’re the government.” Audio was perfect and these landed SO WELL. ⁣
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The audio is phenomenal. Full cast and some major big names. They all delivered so well.⁣
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Januaries was such a good read, I can’t recommend it enough! Happy pub day!⁣
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QOTD: What are you reading today?

Someone knew what they were doing releasing this book called Januaries in October. This is an utterly haunting collection of stories. It honestly made me uncomfortable - but in the way reading sometimes ought to.

I think most readers - myself included - naturally look for a pattern in a collection like this. You’ll have to be okay with not finding one here, or, at the very least, with not finding solid ground.

But if I had up pick the thread that seems to run through Januaries’ stories, it’s the feeling of being trapped. In a bridge. In a house of horrors. In a relationship. In the wrong time or place. In the throes of depression.

Blake’s writing is in a league of its own for modern fantasy. I’m not sure that always comes through in these short stories, which are often meandering and colloquial, but there are glimmers of her brand of prose. For this reason, I think fans of Olivie Blake will adore Januaries, and those new to her writing will too. But, obviously, we have to approach short stories with a different set of criteria.

Not many people have done this in the popular fiction/fantasy space. And I think it’s harder to write a short story than a novel.

Did I enjoy this the same way I do a novel? No. But I wasn’t meant to.

Am I still thinking about a couple of these stories weeks later? Absolutely I am.

And that’s the five star energy. You don’t have theories about a work like this. Just good old fashioned interpretation.