edit: After so careful thought and reading a few other reviews I decided to drop my rating. There is just too much wrong with this book, and "pretty words" can't fix it. As on review stated very well: "fucking weird". The author wrote about college like she hadn't ever set foot on a campus. You don't get bullied for wearing sweats in college. Most people wear sweats in college. And Ariel, the MC, hallucinates or dreams more than any healthy person. Any time her boyfriend comes on to her, she "goes to the otherland". Wtf does that even mean? I enjoyed reading this book, but I hated every character. I had no sympathy for any of them. The final climactic scene was a mess that was impossible to follow. And there was an epilogue like something out of a weird fairy tale. I quit. 

update:

I'm too tired and in pain for a full review. Let's just break this down to the basics. The writing style was very pretty and fleshed out. But it had a few errors, like using the same word as both an adverb and adjective in the same sentence. That just makes things sound redundant. 

The story itself was...uh....weird. It was trying so hard to be deep, and it ended up being whacked out, like it was written by someone on LSD. The main character spent 200 pages crying and starving herself and wandering the streets looking for her missing friend. When she isn't weeping like a maniac, she's being a horrible human being to all around her or just being a total shut in that's never seen the outside world. The description of college life seemed more like high school, with the way the guys bully and torture the MC. Stuff happens that goes unexplained, a lot of her behavior is never addressed,  and even on the last page of the book, you are left feeling like maybe MC was high the whole time and the whole damn book was just a bad trip. Getting naked in a rose garden at night? Rolling in mud for strangers? Dancing on the beach with a bunch of strangers dressed as faeries? I really have no clue what I just read.

The mystery I had figured out by page 50. Not much of a mystery. All in all, fucking bizarre. But 3 stars because it was written so pretty. 

So far this is fascinating. The writing is very well done, and I'm finding the story compelling. 

The first story is called Snow, and is a touching retelling of Snow White that is more about found families than anything, although it touches upon a common theme in Lia Block’s work: the outcasts, those who don’t fit into society as most people view it.   The freaks, as she puts it in this story. 

Lia Block manages to show a great deal of sympathy, manages to evoke that, without revealing a great deal about the past of these characters, and that’s impressive to me. 

I was nearly in tears by the end of this tale.   It also uses one of Lia Block’s most common traits, the reliance of sensory writing.   That is, feel, taste, smell, sight, and scents are all strongly represented, and used heavily, and it’s gorgeous how she weaves all the sensory input into her stories seamlessly. 

I loved this. 

Tiny is the second story, and while the structure and the sensory story telling was there, I found myself far less moved by this story.   In the first, the love, the emotions, were built up and in this it felt far too sudden. 

That being said, it wasn’t bad, and far from awful.   I think it suffered being right after Snow, because that was so effective, it highlighted how much Tiny didn’t work for me. 

Onto the third. 

Glass is the third story and the retelling of Cinderella.   I felt the same way I did about Tiny: it wasn’t as effective as Snow, and while a fair enough story, I wished it had the little extra that Snow did.   It relies even more on sensory writing than Tiny did, though, and I really like that about Lia Block’s writing.   She excels at writing about anything that is related to the senses, so I enjoyed this story even more than Tiny. 

Charm is the fourth story, and a brutal retelling of Sleeping Beauty that touches upon child pornography and drug addiction.   It was heartbreaking, touching, and was everything I hoped the second and third story would have been.   It was a slow buildup of an emotional release that left me, in fact, crying. 

Beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful, everything that Lia Block is at her best.   Brava. 

Wolf, the fifth story, is the retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, and deals with the sexual abuse of a teenager.  (I believe.)   At one point, she tells her mother’s boyfriend, the wolf, that he had raped her for years, and this is big for me: rape is oftentimes obscured, or couched in terms that make it seem less ugly. 

It is not here.   it is described as ugly, and it is named.   Another story where both the sensory writing and the slow building up of the characters, the past, the emotion combine to make this a truly glorious story full of pain and hope, side by side, and equals.   Another wonderfully breathtaking story.   Lia Block is not afraid to tackle hard subjects, or to be painfully honest about them.   I admire her so much for stories just like this. 

Rose is the sixth story and retelling of Rose Red.   Beautiful, haunting, full of lush imagery and tastes and sounds and the touch of things, with a little bit of a sadder ending than most of these have had.  

Still, lovely, and I think that for the most part, this collection is showing Lia Block at the height of her talent.   

Bones, the retelling of Bluebeard, fell into the category of Tiny and Glass: not a bad story, but nothing that jumped out as more exceptional, or even as exceptional, as the other stories. 

It lacked the emotional depth for me that the others did, while plumbing the darkness of what humans can do to one another.  Probably my least favorite of the stories so far. 

Pop Sugar has one category that is a book based on a fairy tale.   Even better, these are very modern retellings of multiple fairy tales.

Beast is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and while it tried to turn the story on its head in a way that connected with the readers, it didn’t quite work for me.   I’m not sure why: it feels like it should have, but it just didn’t.  I didn’t feel the story as intensely as I did, but maybe that’s because the other stories delved into something deep and dark and painful and that pain made the hope and beauty sharper by contrast?

This lacked the contrast.   Again, it’s not a bad story, it just suffers when put in a collection with such gems as Snow and Rose and Charm and Wolf. 

Ice is one of those stories that I love up until the ending.   Haunting, painful, lush, everything I expect in a Lia Block story, and then I never have understood - and still don’t understand - the ending. 

It’s frustrating because for the most part, this collection is something that is fairly plain, and then the odd ending makes me feel as if I don’t get something obvious.   A bizarre way to end this collection!

Overall, I loved this.   Some stories more than others, but yes, I did love this.   

It's getting to dark to read this without turning on the light, and Dean's visiting.  He's curled up into this cute little ball of fur, and I'm laying next to him. 

I don't want to turn on the light and wake him up, so the last story, Ice (no doubt a retelling of the Ice Queen) will have to wait for now.  I could get up and go downstairs, but Dean is so peaceful and so warm at my side, I don't want to!

Gonna read something on the Kindle app for now.