The Blood of Imuriv by Renee Ahdieh: 3 stars

Jack by Ameriie: 3.5 stars

Gwen and Art and Lance by Soman Chainani: 3 stars

Shirley & Jim by Susan Dennard: 4 stars

The Blessing of Little Wants by Sarah Enni: 3 stars

The Sea Witch by Marissa Meyer: 4 stars

Beautiful Venom by Cindy Pon: 5 stars

Death Knell by Victoria Schwab: 5 stars

Marigold by Samantha Shannon: 3 stars

You, You, It's all About You by Adam Silvera: 3 stars

Julian Breaks Every Rule by Andrew Smith: 3.5 stars

Indigo and Shade by April Genevieve Tucholke: 3.5 stars

Sera by Nicola Yoon: 3 stars ( )

As usual with anthologies, there were a few standouts but most fell short. Individual ratings and notes below.

Ahdieh: 1 star. Jarring back-and-forth writing where dialogue doesn't match action/thought, poor dialogue, sentence fragments disrupting flow.
Riccio: 4 stars. Delightfully amusing.

Ameriie: 4.5 stars. Really well written, great voice, food for thought (kind of literally), complex characterization/worldbuilding that uses and subverts the usual storytelling lens (i.e. root for the hero) perfectly.
Burke: 4 stars. Good breakdown of Ameriie's story elements.

Chainani: 2 stars. Annoying format and characters. The manipulation of information by Gwen took a while to come across but was the most interesting part when it did.
Lane: 3 stars. Not much to it, not much to say.

Dennard: 3 stars. Okay ride but no context to the big question of why Shirley is writing this letter to Jean instead of talking to her.
Alsberg: 3 stars. Semi-humorous.

Enni: 3 stars. Decent worldbuilding, but confusing "reveal" and what that means for re-interpreting the beginning of the story.
Lee: 3 stars. Not much to it, not much to say.

Meyer: 4 stars. Nice example of rooting for the antagonist despite them doing evil things.
Herdt: 3 stars. Not much to it, not much to say.

Pon: Nicely told, nice to have Asian retelling of a myth, but nothing new.
Alderson: 1 star. It praised the story as if it was original when overall it's not.

Schwab: 4.5 stars. Really well written. Great example of showing a mystery and world construction to the reader throughout the story. Occasionally creepy, especially because it's death. It worked that common fear of death into the reader/story relationship really well.
George: 2 stars. I could tell the author felt deeply about the topic on a personal level, but it didn't add anything regarding the story.

Shannon: 3.5 stars. Well written, lovely fairy world vibe in descriptions, but still a slight "so what?" at the end.
Perusse: 3.5 stars. Nice mini discussion on feminism and folklore.

Silvera: Decently written and intriguing world, but didn't get anything from it.
Feeney: 2. Not much to it, not much to say.

Smith: Felt like a genuine teenage boy voice but pointless story.
Lemay: 2 stars. Not much to it, not much to say.

Tucholke: 3 stars. Well written, great atmosphere, but the ending really didn't fit for me.
Atkinson: 1.5 stars. Interesting ideas on villainy but presented in a confusing organization.

Yoon: 1 star. Pointless backstory with no present meaning.
Sinclair: 1.5 stars. The humorous attempt fell flat. Very one-dimensional take on feminist villainy. ( )

3.75 out of 5 based on the average of the following ratings:
Blood of Imuriv - 3
Jack - 0 - so bad I couldn't finish it
Gwen and Art and Lance - 2
Shirley and Jim - 2.5
The Blessings of Little wants - 2.5
The Sea Witch - 4
Beautiful Venom - 4.5
Death Knell - 4.5
Marigold - 5
You, you, it's all about you - 4.5
Julian Breaks Every Rule - 1
Indigo and Shade - 2
Sera - 4.5

I found the essays didn't really add anything to the book but mostly didn't detract from it either. ( )

The Blood of Imuriv - 3/10
Jack - 8/10
Gwen and Art and Lance - 1/10
Shirley & Jim - 1/10 (Too fucking cringy.)
The Blessing of Little Wants - 5/10
The Sea Witch - 9/10
Beautiful Venom - 8/10
Death Knell - 6/10
Marigold - 7/10
You, You, It’s All About You - 2/10
Julian Breaks Every Rule - 7/10
Indigo and Shade - 1/10
Sera - 9/10
Total score: 2.5
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Anthologies are hard in general because of their nature. This one is harder still because, for some unfathomable reason, they also included 'essays' from 'BookTubers.'

The Blood of Imuriv: Two siblings bicker over chess and one kills the other. /yawn

Jack: Surprisingly good for the subject matter. The incongruence between floating castle and LCD TVs took me out of the story a bit but the twist was really well done.

Gwen and Art and Lance: Arthurian legend, only set in a modern high school and told entirely through the medium of text messages. Its implies that Gwen is the villain here, but its mostly just high school drama. It did a decent job telling the story within the framing device, but it was a chore to read through that device for an extended period.

Shirley & Jim: Guys? You can write books for young adults that don't take place in high school. Young adults will still like it. This one is a genderbent Sherlock Holmes set in, yup, high school. Except it isn't really Sherlock Holmes - it lacks all the story beats and mystery, it lacks all the personality, it lacks everything besides the name. Which was slightly changed.

The Blessing of Little Wants: Now this is what I'm talking about. Solid story, good world building in a short amount of time, complex characters.

The Sea Witch: Essentially a re-telling of the Little Mermaid in which Ariel and Ursula are one in the same. Super predictable, but wasn't scared to have a villain be villainous.

Beautiful Venom: Medusa, but Asian. I liked the shift to an explicitly non-white protagonist and novel setting for the myth. The protagonist doesn't really move the plot along, though - there's very few actions or choices on her part. Rape is also a plot device.

Death Knell: This reminded me a lot of The Slow Regard of Silent Things, which is not a compliment. It was Artsy. It was Deep. It was Twee. I don't really get any villainy in this.

Marigold: Erl-Queen retelling in 19th Century London. Pretty solid as well.

You, You, Its All About You: High-schooler turned drug lord. There is no damn reason to write this in second person like you're making a Geocities page for an adoptable. I would have loved this in first or third person.

Julian Breaks Every Rule: More high school drama. But that aside, I liked how Julian's 'powers' are ambiguous and you can't tell if they are legit, much like you can't really tell how reliable of a narrator he is. I didn't love the 4th-wall breakage but that was a minor annoyance.

Indigo & Shade: Nothing new or of substance. Stilted.

Sera: Interesting take on the birth of a God(des) of War.

Now let's talk about the BookTubers. They did two things in/for the book: 1) Provide a writing prompt for an author, and 2) Write an essay. A lot of the prompts were really specific and didn't give the authors a lot of wiggle room to work in - it felt less like a prompt for a themed anthology and more of a "I have an excuse to make an author write fiction for me!" Similarly, the essays were largely insipid. They felt like they could have been plucked from a Buzzfeed clickbait quiz. They were completely awful, with humor that fell utterly flat, insights the level of a book report from a CliffNotes Study Guide, and often little to nothing to do with the short story itself. The book is much, much weaker for their inclusion, hence 2 stars instead of 3-4. It just comes off as BookTubers taking an opportunity to piggyback on creatives to self-promote.
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