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A review by lambsbooks
Januaries: Stories of Love, Magic & Betrayal by Olivie Blake
4.5
Overall rating: 4.5 stars
Fav Stories: The Animation Games, To Make A Man, and A Year in January
Overall thoughts: I flewwww through these stories. I’ve read a few short story compilations and when they’re written well, I find them really fun, and this one was really fun. A little hard to review, so I broke it down to each of the Seasons and then each story within the seasons. Some thoughts but mostly questions 😂
Thank you Tor Books, Coloured Pages Book Tours, and the author for this eARC and physical ARC!
Spring
The Wish Bridge - 4.5 stars
I was born with a vastness inside me, and sometimes I feel it will swallow me up.
Okay, what? That was so beautiful. 😭 I turned the page and there was no more and I needed more wandering. More wishes. More full moons and bread and sin and forgiveness. More Nile and Lila.
The Audit - 4 stars
I wonder what makes me so valuable when I am unquestionably the most boring person in my life.
This was an exercise in patience. On my end. Because the main character was annoying 😂
This was about living life to the fullest - but maybe not the way you imagined. It was about choices and bad decisions and being unprepared for, well, life. Sometimes the easy decision isn’t the smart one. Or is it?
What do I want? What do I want? Time feels like it’s slipping away from me. It’s already been five days. I can’t breathe.
Sucker for Pain - 4.75 stars
To be wealthy, to be powerful, was to bleed. She would later find this observation to be both very correct and hugely mistaken.
Witches and vampires. Magic and murder. Captivity and freedom. Love, betrayal, and heartbreak. This one had it all. And what an ending, full circle and all that.
“Because I hardly know what I am without you,” he replied. “If there was ever a time I existed without you, it is long gone now. In a different world, or a different life. As if the universe itself rearranged to fill the gaps, and before you, there was no me at all.”
Summer
The Animation Games - 5 stars
Sometimes the end is just the beginning.
When the story starts with death, you know you’re in for a rollercoaster of a ride. An emotional rollercoaster with no seatbelt and you're hanging on for dear life.
There is part of me that knows I am ending even as I am so filled with beginnings, and I don’t suffer any pain; I only feel numbness, and then an abject chill.
If you want to read about two people falling in love and living happily ever after, don’t read this. Or maybe do?
If you want to read about a game of two people who seem to hate and love each other, who can’t stop hurting each other, killing each other, destroying each other, then read this. Or maybe it's not about that at all?
“I think,” he murmured, taking a step toward her, “that we have had so many lives together, Rhosyn, we may very well be soulmates.”
The House - No rating, it was 3 pages 😂
Step 1: Get married
Rule 1: Marriage is a house you build together
Step 2: Maybe don’t get married
To Make a Man - 5 stars
“Just keep your head down, be good. Get out of this neighborhood and make something of yourself before it’s too late.”
What would you do if a stranger walked up to you and said “One year from today, you’ll be dead in this spot, everyone watching, but no one helping”?
And what would happen if you added in fate, gods, and unrelenting heartbreak and sadness?
You cry.
Well, I cried.
She wondered how to tell him that he was a deck consisting entirely of aces. Arrange his features any way you liked and he was still a winning hand.
Preexisting Condition - 4 stars
"The best parts are always fleeting. Love is never true. Men are mostly garbage fuckers. Women are deceitful and envious. Every day is hot as seven hells. Every waking morning is somehow worse and more despairing than the last.” She is pounding the cassava roughly but then looks up for a moment, as if she forgot something.
“Life is a gift.”
I have no words for this story, what the fuck did I just read lmao
I guess this story is about lovers, enemies, death, magic, and the power of revenge reparations.
Autumn
Monsterlove - 4.5 stars
A howl escapes and it is pain. The pain takes off its mask, aha it has been anger this whole time! The anger hurts because—a dramatic reveal—it is actually guilt in disguise!
Well, this was a depressing take on being a mother but it might be fulfilling to those who are new moms or just bone-dead exhausted moms.
I mean, if you weren’t willing to retain the metaphysical walls of this form permanently, why did you even have a child?
Or just women who are sick of the comments telling them that no matter what we do, we’ll never win.
Actually she can see now that the Good One is always holding a knife, only it’s shoved into her own chest, and the Anti-Self is guiding it in, and it is the monsterlove, and her other forms splinter upward from around its center, and it is the most alive she knows how to feel.
How to Dispel Friends and Cure People - 4.5 stars
So I think what you meant to say was
Come in
But seeing as you are out of practice I’ll just wait here
Until you inevitably realize
You used the wrong words
A love poem. Um, of a sort. But cute.
I would dig up bodies for you if you needed it
I think maybe that’s a bad sign
I think maybe that might be love?
You might remember
I mentioned that briefly
My affections et cetera et cetera
And you sighed
And turned me into a beetle
Fates and Consequences -3.75 stars
ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD TIMES. DO NOT ENJOY THIS AUDIT.
SIGNED, MANAGEMENT
NO EXERTING OF EFFORT TO MAKE THINGS EASIER. SUFFERING ONLY!
SIGNED, MANAGEMENT
What happens when Fate cuts the wrong thread?
Guy Carrington ends up in Hell.
He has to attend brunch with his mother, get audited, make lemonade with papercuts, a prostate exam, a colonoscopy…you get the picture.
What happens when you have to live out your worst nightmares all day, every day? What happens when you deserve your fate?
Sous Vide - 3.5 stars, 3.75 stars?
Because my whole life revolves around money. It has to! That’s the system I’m plugged into! You know? You can’t be happy without money, because in order to be happy you need choices, you need freedom, you need the ability to think and dream and wonder and you just simply cannot do that if you spend all day and night thinking about how you’ll pay your next bill. It’s unfair that people don’t do more to help each other. People shouldn’t let other people go hungry. It’s so cruel.
What do you do when you are desperate for money and are handed an opportunity of relief? Cook for someone? Cook for…something? Don’t break the rules but don’t worry, everyone breaks the rules.
This was a weird one. AND THE ENDING
Winter
Sensual Tales for Carnal Pleasures 3.25 stars
I was born as much for love as I was made for destruction, and now, at last, I understand. There is always a price, my mother tells me sadly, for nothing beautiful is ever as it seems.
This one was a little confusing to me but it did have a “who did this to you” from her to him so that was nice 😂 but it was a magical castle? I dunno, I was confused. It’s about actions and consequences, costs, benefits, and losses. AND THE REVEAL! I gasped😯
He is a beautiful, dangerous thing.
Chaos Theory - 4.5 stars
Maybe the truth is that I am a vessel of chaos. Touch me and I will explode.
Um, so yeah, this was chaos and I don’t even know what to say? There was a OMG 😂😂 moment, you’ll know it when you get to it, but this was…um…yeah, chaos? There’s literally nothing I can say that won’t spoil it completely 😂
A Year in January - 5 stars
I am not very good at friendships. I find I have a tendency for devotion and therefore expect the same. When I do not receive it I become despondent, though not fruitfully so.
I think this main character has mania or depression/anxeity from the way things read, but it was a little hard to read because of that. She did mention mania at one point, but I don’t think that was all. But, yeah it was hard to read. Mainly because it was described, or not described, so well. I understood what she was saying. I felt seen.
It was really sad.
“Does everyone take sabbaticals?”
“No. But I think most people are better at it than me.”
“Better at what?”
“All of it,” I said, but what I meant was existing.
Fav Stories: The Animation Games, To Make A Man, and A Year in January
Overall thoughts: I flewwww through these stories. I’ve read a few short story compilations and when they’re written well, I find them really fun, and this one was really fun. A little hard to review, so I broke it down to each of the Seasons and then each story within the seasons. Some thoughts but mostly questions 😂
Thank you Tor Books, Coloured Pages Book Tours, and the author for this eARC and physical ARC!
Spring
The Wish Bridge - 4.5 stars
I was born with a vastness inside me, and sometimes I feel it will swallow me up.
Okay, what? That was so beautiful. 😭 I turned the page and there was no more and I needed more wandering. More wishes. More full moons and bread and sin and forgiveness. More Nile and Lila.
The Audit - 4 stars
I wonder what makes me so valuable when I am unquestionably the most boring person in my life.
This was an exercise in patience. On my end. Because the main character was annoying 😂
This was about living life to the fullest - but maybe not the way you imagined. It was about choices and bad decisions and being unprepared for, well, life. Sometimes the easy decision isn’t the smart one. Or is it?
What do I want? What do I want? Time feels like it’s slipping away from me. It’s already been five days. I can’t breathe.
Sucker for Pain - 4.75 stars
To be wealthy, to be powerful, was to bleed. She would later find this observation to be both very correct and hugely mistaken.
Witches and vampires. Magic and murder. Captivity and freedom. Love, betrayal, and heartbreak. This one had it all. And what an ending, full circle and all that.
“Because I hardly know what I am without you,” he replied. “If there was ever a time I existed without you, it is long gone now. In a different world, or a different life. As if the universe itself rearranged to fill the gaps, and before you, there was no me at all.”
Summer
The Animation Games - 5 stars
Sometimes the end is just the beginning.
When the story starts with death, you know you’re in for a rollercoaster of a ride. An emotional rollercoaster with no seatbelt and you're hanging on for dear life.
There is part of me that knows I am ending even as I am so filled with beginnings, and I don’t suffer any pain; I only feel numbness, and then an abject chill.
If you want to read about two people falling in love and living happily ever after, don’t read this. Or maybe do?
If you want to read about a game of two people who seem to hate and love each other, who can’t stop hurting each other, killing each other, destroying each other, then read this. Or maybe it's not about that at all?
“I think,” he murmured, taking a step toward her, “that we have had so many lives together, Rhosyn, we may very well be soulmates.”
The House - No rating, it was 3 pages 😂
Step 1: Get married
Rule 1: Marriage is a house you build together
Step 2: Maybe don’t get married
To Make a Man - 5 stars
“Just keep your head down, be good. Get out of this neighborhood and make something of yourself before it’s too late.”
What would you do if a stranger walked up to you and said “One year from today, you’ll be dead in this spot, everyone watching, but no one helping”?
And what would happen if you added in fate, gods, and unrelenting heartbreak and sadness?
You cry.
Well, I cried.
She wondered how to tell him that he was a deck consisting entirely of aces. Arrange his features any way you liked and he was still a winning hand.
Preexisting Condition - 4 stars
"The best parts are always fleeting. Love is never true. Men are mostly garbage fuckers. Women are deceitful and envious. Every day is hot as seven hells. Every waking morning is somehow worse and more despairing than the last.” She is pounding the cassava roughly but then looks up for a moment, as if she forgot something.
“Life is a gift.”
I have no words for this story, what the fuck did I just read lmao
I guess this story is about lovers, enemies, death, magic, and the power of revenge reparations.
Autumn
Monsterlove - 4.5 stars
A howl escapes and it is pain. The pain takes off its mask, aha it has been anger this whole time! The anger hurts because—a dramatic reveal—it is actually guilt in disguise!
Well, this was a depressing take on being a mother but it might be fulfilling to those who are new moms or just bone-dead exhausted moms.
I mean, if you weren’t willing to retain the metaphysical walls of this form permanently, why did you even have a child?
Or just women who are sick of the comments telling them that no matter what we do, we’ll never win.
Actually she can see now that the Good One is always holding a knife, only it’s shoved into her own chest, and the Anti-Self is guiding it in, and it is the monsterlove, and her other forms splinter upward from around its center, and it is the most alive she knows how to feel.
How to Dispel Friends and Cure People - 4.5 stars
So I think what you meant to say was
Come in
But seeing as you are out of practice I’ll just wait here
Until you inevitably realize
You used the wrong words
A love poem. Um, of a sort. But cute.
I would dig up bodies for you if you needed it
I think maybe that’s a bad sign
I think maybe that might be love?
You might remember
I mentioned that briefly
My affections et cetera et cetera
And you sighed
And turned me into a beetle
Fates and Consequences -3.75 stars
ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD TIMES. DO NOT ENJOY THIS AUDIT.
SIGNED, MANAGEMENT
NO EXERTING OF EFFORT TO MAKE THINGS EASIER. SUFFERING ONLY!
SIGNED, MANAGEMENT
What happens when Fate cuts the wrong thread?
Guy Carrington ends up in Hell.
He has to attend brunch with his mother, get audited, make lemonade with papercuts, a prostate exam, a colonoscopy…you get the picture.
What happens when you have to live out your worst nightmares all day, every day? What happens when you deserve your fate?
Sous Vide - 3.5 stars, 3.75 stars?
Because my whole life revolves around money. It has to! That’s the system I’m plugged into! You know? You can’t be happy without money, because in order to be happy you need choices, you need freedom, you need the ability to think and dream and wonder and you just simply cannot do that if you spend all day and night thinking about how you’ll pay your next bill. It’s unfair that people don’t do more to help each other. People shouldn’t let other people go hungry. It’s so cruel.
What do you do when you are desperate for money and are handed an opportunity of relief? Cook for someone? Cook for…something? Don’t break the rules but don’t worry, everyone breaks the rules.
This was a weird one. AND THE ENDING
Winter
Sensual Tales for Carnal Pleasures 3.25 stars
I was born as much for love as I was made for destruction, and now, at last, I understand. There is always a price, my mother tells me sadly, for nothing beautiful is ever as it seems.
This one was a little confusing to me but it did have a “who did this to you” from her to him so that was nice 😂 but it was a magical castle? I dunno, I was confused. It’s about actions and consequences, costs, benefits, and losses. AND THE REVEAL! I gasped😯
He is a beautiful, dangerous thing.
Chaos Theory - 4.5 stars
Maybe the truth is that I am a vessel of chaos. Touch me and I will explode.
Um, so yeah, this was chaos and I don’t even know what to say? There was a OMG 😂😂 moment, you’ll know it when you get to it, but this was…um…yeah, chaos? There’s literally nothing I can say that won’t spoil it completely 😂
A Year in January - 5 stars
I am not very good at friendships. I find I have a tendency for devotion and therefore expect the same. When I do not receive it I become despondent, though not fruitfully so.
I think this main character has mania or depression/anxeity from the way things read, but it was a little hard to read because of that. She did mention mania at one point, but I don’t think that was all. But, yeah it was hard to read. Mainly because it was described, or not described, so well. I understood what she was saying. I felt seen.
It was really sad.
“Does everyone take sabbaticals?”
“No. But I think most people are better at it than me.”
“Better at what?”
“All of it,” I said, but what I meant was existing.