The first volume of Project Unicorn is a good collection, even though as one would expect with such a large number of stories in one place, there are some that are weaker than others. They aren’t weak enough to bring down the book as a whole, though, and there are some really great stories that I’ll likely read again and again. It’s a cohesive collection; while all the stories are different genres, a lot of them share similar themes that make them all fit together in one book. While sometimes Sarah’s sentences ran a little long, and Jennifer overused ellipses to punctuate her writing, overall the writing was really good. The style changed depending on what kind of story they were telling, and they pulled it off well. Some writers can only write in one certain style or tone; Sarah and Jennifer have proven that they can write in several. The stand outs of the collection were In The Garden I Did Not Sin, Two Salt Feet, Poppy and Salt (Sarah), A Craving, Mirrors, The Girl on the Mountain (Jennifer). Interestingly, most of the ones I liked the most were the ones that could be expanded into full length novels or novellas, with the exception of possibly Two Salt Feet, Mirrors and A Craving. I would love to see In The Garden I Did Not Sin made into a full length novel; the idea and the writing were just spectacular, and I want to know more about the two girls it features, one a daughter of Eve, another the daughter of Lillith. It’s a very daring short story, but it’s so good it’s worth the risk of offending someone. Two Salt Feet was one of the stories that felt the most compact and complete out of the collection. It’s a simple, lovely story about a girl saving a mermaid and the mermaid turning into a human due to a new evolutionary step, since her kind are being over fished. I liked the depth between the mother and the main character. The Mom sometimes makes some mistakes, but overall she’s supportive and loving to her daughter. Seeing the mermaid try to figure out the world around her was cute, too. Poppy and Salt had really interesting world building--an organization of vampires hunting other vampires who go on rampages and kill humans or feed without a human’s consent. I’d love to see it explored more, as well as the relationship between the two main characters, Celia and Alice. There’s a lot of good things here I want to see more of. A Craving was another retelling of the Snow White fairytale. Jennifer’s taken on this particular tale before in Sappho’s Fables, but I thought she did much better with this one than the other. A story about a girl who’s told to refuse the young apple seller who comes to the cottage every day, and what happens when one day she doesn’t. Very lovely in its simplicity. Mirrors was a story about a girl who sees another girl in a compact mirror she recently bought, and how that eventually leads her to the girl herself. It was a little hard to read in places though, due to a realistic portrayal of bullying that the main character faces at school for being gay. It ends on a happy note, though. The Girl on the Mountain is a very dreamy, almost mythic story about a young girl seeing another fly from the sky one day, and how the MC--Kivrin--grows up to love her. The worries Kivrin has about how to possibly tell the girl, Laurel, she loves her when Laurel is considered a goddess by Kivrin’s village was well done and cute. “ If I had to chose my least favourite out of the bunch, it would be Mermaid Circus by Sarah and Pearls Enough by Jennifer. For Mermaid Circus, it felt just a little cliche for a circus story--you’ve got the main character who’s grown up in the circus and wants to leave it all behind. It also didn’t seem to have much of a point or general story, in the end. Pearls Enough irritated me due to the main character constantly talking badly about her sister, who she’s been living with. Given the time period, which seems to be somewhere in the 19th century, her complaints about her sister being a typical woman of the time grated on me badly. It just seemed set up to make the main character more special, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Overall though, I loved the collection. The extras at the end of the book--author’s notes on each story and interviews with both Sarah and Jennifer--were cute. Project Unicorn is one I’ll keep coming back to, and it’s definitely worth a look.See more of my reviews at On The Nightstand!