I love this collection of ahort stories. My attention was grabbed immediately with The Wish Bridge and I adore Olivie Blake’s prose.

I’ll always read anything by Olivie Blake. I’m never disappointed by how beautiful her writing is.

I enjoyed cozying up in bed before bedtime and diving into this collection of short stories. The stories vary in length and ratings and they feel like fairytales for adults.

Although this is not a life-changing book by any means, it was very atmospheric and a perfect bedside book.

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. They are a perfect collection to snuggle up to on an evening with a cuppa. Very surprisingly I enjoyed each story in one way or another. I loved the aspect of splitting this book up into different seasons and exploring different genres throughout.
It is maybe actually a 4.5 star.

*Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for a review copy and access to the advanced listening copy of the book!

I really don't think I knew what I was getting myself into when I decided to dive into Januaries. This collection of short stories lives up to its title: There are moments of love, incorporation of magic, and wild acts of betrayal. With Olivie Blake's talent with words, I should have realized I'd be in for a treat.
While hard to summarize, it is important to realize that this is a short story collection broken up into four seasonally titled sections. The content of these stories vary wildly, but they are all incredibly entertaining in their own way. I think it would be fun to share my favorite short story from each section of this book, those that I feel are absolute stand-outs and make this collection so worth reading. They are as follows: The Wish Bridge, To Make a Man, Sous Vide, and Chaos Theory.
This was my first experience with listening to an audiobook for one of Blake's books and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to do so. The audiobook includes multi-cast narration, which adds so so much to the storytelling. Each narrator brings something new and exciting to the story they're reading, helping to transport the reader into the pages of this book. The narration for Monsterlove was particularly incredible and made the emotion behind Blake's words so evident. It completely elevated the text and made for a wonderful listening experience.
If you're in the mood for a collection of short stories, do yourself a favor and read this book!

SOLID 4.5 stars for this beautiful collection of short stories <3

I don’t even know where to begin with this anthology.. each story held so much depth and took up so much space in my mind. I love the humor, whimsy, and affection that was woven into each and every single narrative. Though they all varied greatly in terms of subject matter, it all did truly come back to love, magic and betrayal! I also loved the nods to Greek mythology (I am obsessed.)

I have been going back and forth about which stories I loved the most and truly, it is SO hard to decide. I am going to try my hardest to only pick one or two from each season that they take place.
-Spring: Sucker for Pain was very magical, though The Wish Bridge was beautifully imaginative and captivating.
-Summer: The Animation Games was absolutely hilarious and I did not expect it at all. To Make A Man literally brought me to tears.
-Autumn: Fates and Consequences had me laughing out loud in the car.
-Winter: Chaos Theory!!!!!!!! Wow. What an incredible story, it was hands down my favorite of the entire book.

I really enjoyed the sense of wonder that I felt while reading each tale. Olivie Blake’s writing was just, simply put, beautiful and romantic. Even in the sad bits, I could still feel like love and sometimes deep grief that was put on the page.

I would recommend to anyone who wants bite sized pieces of magic. I received both the audiobook and ebook ARC of this and I have to say that the narration of the audiobook was top tier!!! Especially in Chaos Theory.

Thank you so much Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group for my arcs of this book!!! I loved it so much.

This was a lovely collection of short stories by Olivie Blake! Typically with anthologies there are equal amounts of hits and misses but the stories in this collection leaned heavily towards hits and they were very enjoyable!

The stories in this anthology collection explored themes of love and magic and were all unique in their own way. Each story was well written and wrapped up in a way that didn't leave the reader feeling as if the story was in any way incomplete or unfinished. The story concepts were well thought out and so uniquely executed and it was refreshing to read stories in a consecutive pattern also that were so nicely arranged.

This was my first stab at Olivie Blake and I'm already sold on exploring her other works.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for allowing me to read an ARC of this book.

I am a huge fan of Olivie Blake and will read and anything and everything she writes, but I was very intrigued and exited to learn about this short story collection. If you like Magic, Life, Death, Love, & Revenge as much as I do then this book is for you. These 14 tales, are witty, whimsical, romantic, and will enchant you.

My personal favorite in the collection was The Wish Bridge. The fact that is was the first story was both good and bad for me. It worked to really draw me in and invest me into the book, because it was SO GOOD!! But then the rest of the stories in comparison to that one were just ok (some were definitely better than others). Some of the themes do repeat themselves, but the stories are unique and special enough to not be too much of an issue. It definitely kept my attention to the very end.

I love that Blake experimented with different styles throughout the collection. It made for a very interesting and delightful overall read! I will definitely be recommending this book for my book club. Fans of Olivie Blake and stories about magic will want to check this one out!

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