Overall Rating: 4.25/5

You can be anything here. By winter it will have fallen away.

Quite frankly, I adore everything Olivie Blake writes. There's always something so unique and magical about her writing and this is no less true for this anthology. I had such a brilliant time reading it.
There were many stories that I absolutely adored with all my heart, yet even the ones I didn't feel as passionately towards (which is inevitable in any short story collection) I still found incredibly enjoyable and engrossing. Olivie Blake is an author that inspires fascination and I loved diving into each story as there was always something to ruminate on.

We are led through the seasons into a vast array of stories. We are given the time to extrapolate our own thoughts and conclusions as we are fed the themes inextricable of the many different types of love that are showcased. I had so many favourite stories within this collection, but I will expand upon only a few that I can talk about without spoilers.
Chaos Theory is the longest story by far—I don't know if it would technically count as a short story or a novelette or even a novella. It is also my favourite. I think because of its length, we are given that much more time to connect with the characters and it's an incredibly imaginative concept to explore. So many poignant and emotional themes are fit into such a limited word count, and I found this to be true even for all the other much shorter stories. Chaos Theory is about resistance and strength and bravery in worlds that are fighting for your submission, I can't say much about the plot without spoiling it, but it is immensely genius and I desperately want a full novel version of it! It really is awfully difficult to write about such short stories without giving anything away, but I did want to mention this standout one in particular.
(Others of my favourites included; Monsterlove, a beautiful, emotionally-driven and lyrically written story that I will let you interpret for yourselves; The Animation Games, a rampaging, blisteringly beautiful story of love and betrayal, devotion and duty, revenge and bloodshed; and A Year in January, the very last story of the collection, an accepting rendition of a wholly separate kind of love.)

You will notice, if you have already read the stories I've mentioned, that I am drawn to the more emotionally searing, heartfelt ones. I think Olivie Blake is at her best when she writes about such moving, sometimes haunting, topics. I adore how her prose bleeds from the page like a song, there are so many stories that are cut straight from her marrow. I admire how much of herself she leaves on the page, it is why her characters are always so complex, well-rounded and fully realised, because she infuses them with a vulnerability and a humanity that is so hard to achieve in mere writing.

She feels the danger. But she has looked danger in the eye before without becoming it.

I loved this collection. If you love Olivie Blake then definitely pick this one up! I'm so curious to know which stories people love the most, or which ones speak to them the most! I can't wait for more Olivie (Gifted and Talented please come sooner)!

Thank you Tor for an arc in exchange for an honest review.