Olivie Blake cannot do any wrong in my eyes😌 4.5 stars cause I need more!!!!
The range of stories kept me so entertained and I personally think half of them need their full length stories cause what do you mean I don’t get to read in detail about Bran and Rhosyn???? If I had to choose favourites, it’s probably gonna be The wish Bridge (we were robbed of their great adventures), Sucker for pain (I’d read a whole book about Nora) and Animation Games (I do not need to say anything more).

Absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on the physical copy!

Thanks netgalley for the arc:)

I have a little confession to make - for some reason, this was my first Olivia Blake book, though I do own a copy of Alone with You in the Ether and One for the Enemy.
Therefore, I cannot be the judge of whether or not this is a typical Olivia book. But one thing is clear - she sure knows how to get the reader’s attention and keep it till the very end.

I love that she experimented with different styles throughout the book and immensely enjoyed the fact that there were several different stories, one more captivating than the other. The stories are witty, whimsical, and romantic, and though some of the themes repeat themselves, the stories alone are unique and special enough for the reader to not be bothered by that.

My personal favorites were The Wish Bridge, Fates and Consequences, and Sous Vide and though there were some I didn't quite enjoy as much (therefore 4 stars) I’d still recommend this book to others.

This is the first short-story collection I ever read that I really enjoyed. There were only two stories that I would rate less than 4 stars!

Due to its nature, the book plays with a lot of different themes, characters and genres. There is a story about witches and vampires that also deals with oppression and abuse. There is a futuristic story with an interesting concept of loaning money and what to do with the money. There even is an Omegaverse story with five interconnected storylines spanning different places, times and realities. But at it's core, each of the short stories love and/or betrayal.

I found it very impressive how Olivie Blake and her team managed to curate a collection that feels cohesive while every single story is so different from the others.

As always, Olivie Blake writes in a way that draws you into a story in the span of only a few sentences. Thus, the stories are easy to read despite their content often being rather complex.

And what I really liked was how mental health issues were integrated in some of the stories.

My favorite stories were Sucker for Pain, The Animation Game, Fates and Consequences, and Sensual Tales for Carnal Pleasures. But I also really enjoyed The Wish Bridge, The Audit, To Make A Man, Preexisting Condition, and Sous Vide.

This book is a collection of short stories and it has beautiful illustrations as usual. I absolutely love her books for the brilliant writing , the mesmerizing plotline, charming characters and the beautiful illustrations 🤌✨💫

The theme of the stories are love, magic and betrayal. Each story was unique and brilliantly penned down by the author. Her writing is different and refreshing, well the same vibe is kept in this one too.

Again, she left me feeling wholesome and happy after finishing the book.

It is Autumn in New England. It is Autumn all over the country, but in New England we feel these things rather keenly. There are mums and pumpkins on all the front steps. There are apples in bags in all the kitchens. We are the land of Gilmore Girls and Stephen King, of fields of pumpkins and Christmas trees. And even those who don’t crack a book on a daily basis, feel the urge to wrap up in a blanket, listen to the leaves rustle, and read a good book. In my mind it’s a good time of year for short story collections. A good time of year for something slightly spooky. And this year, it’s a good time of year for the latest book from novelist Olivie Blake.

Januaries, Stories of Love, Magic and Betrayal is a lengthy and delightfully varied collection of short stories and novellas. Some read like modern retellings of familiar fairy tales, others read like pages from newspapers summoned from our immediate future. Some of the stories read like Edmund Spenser has re-written parts of The Faerie Queene in a modern day American setting, others give the feeling that Isaac Asimov is imagining the next few years, in a post AI world. It is a multi-faceted collection that twists and turns with each new tale.

While most of the stories follow a traditional narrative pattern, Blake uses the short story format to experiment with style and structure. So we read a witchy love story in verse, and a dystopian future in diary form. At the moment my tastes lean towards linear narrative, but that’s where the short story lends itself to the seasonal inclination to read on a whim, I don’t have to lock myself into something structured otherwise, because the story is soon over, and you are moving on to the next style and story. You can read them through them all, you can pick and choose by title or length, you can seek out something that you are in want of and find it all within the one collection. Like the tapestry of leaves that is beginning to burst out my window, a collection of short stories promises much, and can deliver a whole lot more.

I have been a short story aficionado since reading Stephen Kings’ Nightmares and Dreamscapes as a teenager, and while I am not a fan of horror as a whole, looking over my bookshelves I can see a tendency towards the macabre, the dark, the twisted in my short story interests. Be it Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allen Poe, or Melissa Albert, I seem to like short snaps of dark and twisty. A wonderfully lyrical dark and twisty is exactly what Blake delivers in Januaries wrapping you around her finger and up in a blanket with each new tale. While some of them were a little too grotesque for me, I’m looking at you lady with the teeth everywhere, most of the work lies in the realm of the psychologically dark and twisty rather than the physical.

These stories are mostly centered around the themes of life, death, love and revenge, and how the four play out against each other. It is in the oppositional relationships that Blake thrives, a pair of lovers thrown together where one is accidentally killed. A prince of dreams haunted at night by the pursuit of someone who flips his narrative. The relationships are complicated, the love is deep and deeper still.

My youthful love of James Woods portray of Hades in Disney’s Hercules has continued into adulthood, with the wonderful Broadway show Hadestown And the dark fantasy romance from Scarlett St Clair which explores the romance of Hades and Persephone in a modern world where Olympus came back to earth with a bang. So inevitably one of my favorite pieces from this collection features the character Hades and Perspehone, with a delightful cameo from the fates. Within this, the presentation of Hades carries some of the Woods mannerisms with a nod to Al Pacino’s evil in The Devils Advocate! I love the way Blake plays with these familiar characters and settings.

With or without familiar faces, Blake is able to create and establish characters in a very short amount of time within each story, but is able to provide a satisfying ending with most of the tales. So that you are left wanting more but not staring into the abyss of an unfinished plot. It reads like a master class in the short form, and I hope it is one that she chooses to pursue. I did not like every story, but found many of them to be stunning. As a lover of rewritten fairy tales, I am bewitched by this addition to the Angela Carter wing in my library.

Thank you so much, Tor and NetGalley, for the ARC!

You need to know that you can find a lot of short stories in this book from different genres. We can find Olivie experimenting with different types of narration and storytelling. A lot of them may be similar, but at the same time, we have many stories that really stand out and make you want them to continue.

My favorites are "The Wish Bridge" and "Sucker for Pain."

AHHHHH! THANK YOU SO MUCH TOR AND NG FOR THIS OPPORTUNITY 🤩 I have been a huge Olivie Blake fan for years now (since her AO3 days, honestly) and have read almost all of her novels and short stories thus far. While some may find her manner of prose to be a bit superfluous and/or of the "[but] not much happens" variant, I personally love it and how she always manages to convey & provoke so much emotion out to and from her readers through her words. This collection is slightly different from her previous short story collections in that I think she worked to stray out of her comfort zone a bit in terms of creative structure and style, but I still loved them all* just the same (*some more than others, of course, as is typically the case with anthologies). It's worth noting that some of the stories included here are from some of her older collections but, regardless, they all still felt so distinctly unique from one another that I personally didn't mind that not all of them were technically "new." In the end, I think this collection will make you laugh, cry, and honestly just choose to think more deeply about all the little moments that make up our day-to-day lives and how they impact us over time. This book is perfect for both new and old Olivie Blake fans alike, so please check it out come pub day!

A very fascinating set of short stories, all of which were very much signature Olivie Blake! The stories had a very wide range of themes and emotions, you would never be able to guess what turn they'll take :""D

I had an absolute blast tabbing the book! I never knew what to expect! I also really like the variety of narrations used in the stories -- it ranged from time jump between chapters, to non-chronoligical narration, to multiverses and even to poems!

💫 my favourites were "The Animation Games" and "Sous Vide", I was absolutely hooked to the two stories, and the themes of love and betrayal were so well-written in them

-- ty to the author, the publisher and @coloredpagesbt for an advanced copy!

Januaries is a spellbinding anthology by Olivia Blake full of the author's wit, whimsy, dark romance, twisting plots and clever conundrums. Lovers of the Atlas Six, Masters of Death and One For My Enemy will love the tales in this collection. As a new mother, I particularly enjoyed Monsterlove.

Separated into four to represent the four seasons could have been a nice way to transcribe the atmospheres of each. I was really engaged in the concept, unfortunately, most of the short stories was a bit too hasty. Everything seemed as a jumble of ideas. From a fantasy to a science-fiction then to a romantasy, we were going through texts which seemed too close to another. The second part was a bit slumpy. Even if the third was a bit more appreciable, I was close to stop this before the end. However, the writing was really recognizable and different from every other. I really liked the sarcasm but also the purity in feelings representation. Olivie Blake knows how to write but the rhythm was lacking to me.

Nonetheless, I like the first part more and the last story in it marked me.

I am a huge fan of Olivie Blake's writing so I was beyond excited to dive into her short story collection. All of these stories are essentially about love, but often in unexpected ways. Toxic love, platonic love, motherly love, obsessive love. Interwoven throughout all of the stories is a kind of dark, fairy tale magic that changes from story to story but also felt cohesive. As with all short story collections there were standout favorites and some that I loved less, but overall this was an amazing collection. I'm already planning to return to on Monsterlove once I have children someday because as powerful as it was now, I'm positive it will be exponentially more powerful in the future.

I definitely recommend this to Olivie Blake fans and anyone looking for an intro to her writing.

I enjoyed this fun new short story collection from Olivie Blake. I've enjoyed her writing for many years so it's fun to see her work on a new project now that Atlas Six is completeted. My favorite story is the one with the moon bridge, super cute and felt like it came full circle. Excited to see what she has come out next!

I love getting back to Olivie Blakes short stories. Her collections of shorts were some of my favorite on ao3

Truly Olivie Blake can do no wrong.

A collection of short stories about witches, fate, assassins, and fairytales. The stories are all of magic, laughs, lust, and love. It's a really fun collection where I liked something from every story and every story felt delightfully unique.

I don't remember the last time I read a collection of short stories but this made me think I need to do it more often. It was really fun to get lost in the stories, though many of them I wish were even longer.

This is a compilation of short stories. Had I not noted that it was from one author I might have thought it was a collection of authors, as the stories all vary.

Each story is unique. There are similar themes between some of the stories- love, death, betrayal, magic, however, each story is written and told in its own style.

The stories all vary in length, some are very short, while a couple are longer. I enjoyed being able to read the stories here and there. The stories are all individual and do not link, so there is no need to have to continually read, to be able to keep up with what is happening in a book. I thought this was perfect for reading just before bed- an adult fairytale short story compilation.

I particularly enjoyed a few of the stories:
The Wish Bridge- I was encapsulated by the magic and mystery.
Sucker for pain- the story was interesting and I loved the witch, vampire and magical themes.
Fates and consequences- it was a mix of current day life and technology with greek mythology.

There were a couple of short stories in this collection that I wasn’t so sure about, they felt repetitive and I didn’t enjoy, or they were just so unusual I didn’t follow, however this is my experience of reading this book, and will not be the same for everyone.

On the whole I really enjoyed reading this. The book felt magical and mysterious and I loved the mix of Greek mythology in there as well.

Thank you Netgalley and Tor Publishing for approving me with an advance Whaley copy to read and review. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Januaries is a collection of short stories about love, life, and relationships, with a magical aspect to them. This was my first Olivie Blake book, and even though I’m not usually into short stories, I found a lot to enjoy here! Blake’s writing is absolutely beautiful and has a poetic vibe. Some of the stories really pulled me in, though I didn’t fully connect with all of them.

What really stood out for me was the atmosphere in each story. The cozy vibes and magical worlds were amazing, and the themes of life, death, love, and betrayal were done in such a unique way. I really liked the deeper messages each story had!

I also loved the characters. Each one felt emotionally rich and well-developed, which is impressive given the short story format. Several of the stories, like The Wish Bridge and The Audit, left me wanting more, and I believe they could easily be expanded into full-length novels due to their strong concepts and world-building.

Overall, while I didn’t connect with every story, I appreciated the creativity and the messages embedded within the collection. If you enjoy a magical, thought-provoking anthology, Januaries is worth exploring!

An absolutely delightful collection of magical stories that kept me engaged right from the beginning. Some stories worked for me more than others but overall it was charming, funny, heartwarming and, at times, creepy.
This was my first time reading from this author but it definitely won't be the last.
You can find my more indepth youtube review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiEKdojbaJc

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.

This is outside the scope of my typical reads, but I love Olivie Blake and I would read her grocery lists so here we are!! This was a collection of short stories and I loved a lot of them! I found myself wishing those ones were a little longer, maybe I’m just not used to reading short stories but I just wanted to spend more time with the characters I got attached to. Blake’s writing style is, as always, so stunningly beautiful throughout this whole collection. She invokes so much FEELING through her words & it takes you on a true emotional rollercoaster!!

There were some stories I didn’t like and honestly found myself skimming, but I think this was due to personal preference. It had nothing to do with the writing, I just didn’t care for the topics and found that they dragged way too much.

I think my favorite stories were The Wish Bridge and The Animation Game! I highlighted quite a few lines and definitely want to buy a hard copy of this 🫶🏼

Thank you so much to Netgalley for this ARC!!

i am usually not a short story person but this was SO fantastic. the way the stories were so dissimilar but also had such a strong theme was so fantastic. my favs were probably chaos theory, sucker for pain, the animation games, and sous vide!!! again just such a fabulous collection of writing from a fabulous author.