Hello everyone! Today I am super exicted to share my review of A Universe of Wishes, which is a unique YA anthology collection of short stories which already revolve around the theme of wishes. All of the stories in this anthology are so varied and unique, just like the variety of authors who contributed to the anthology.
I’m participating in a blog tour with the absolutely wonderful Terminal Tours, who graciously included me on this very exciting tour. Thank you to Terminal Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book!
About the Book
Title: A Universe of Wishes
Editor: Dhonielle Clayton
Publisher: Random House
POV: Varies from story to story
Genre: Anthology
Release Date: 12/8/2020
Page Count: 416 pages
Synopsis: In the fourth collaboration with We Need Diverse Books, fifteen award-winning and celebrated diverse authors deliver stories about a princess without need of a prince, a monster long misunderstood, memories that vanish with a spell, and voices that refuse to stay silent in the face of injustice. This powerful and inclusive collection contains a universe of wishes for a braver and more beautiful world.
AUTHORS INCLUDE: Samira Ahmed, Libba Bray, Dhonielle Clayton, Zoraida Córdova, Tessa Gratton, Kwame Mbalia, Anna-Marie McLemore, Tochi Onyebuchi, Mark Oshiro, Natalie C. Parker, Rebecca Roanhorse, Victoria Schwab, Tara Sim, Nic Stone, and a to-be-announced debut author/short-story contest winner
Pros
- Diverse stories from a variety of authors
- Tons of representation all around
- You can read the stories in any order that you want.
- All of the stories had a central theme which bound them all together: Wishes! I feel like this theme is very appropriate for 2020, which has felt very bleak and wish-crushing at times.
Cons
- I wasn’t a fan of all of the stories, but that’s one of the great things about anthology collections! For every story I didn’t like, there were several more that I loved.
- Some stories were spin offs of the author’s main series, which I couldn’t always connect to. Some stories made me want to read more of the author’s work, and others left me confused and disinterested.
I absolutely love anthology novels, so I was very excited to start this one. Featuring several of my favorite authors and new-to-me authors, I was very eager to see what the authors all came up with. For the most part, I was not disappointed and was able to find joy in each story. However, there were some stories that I definitely cared less for, due completely to my own personal preferences.
I could make this review super long and review each short story on it’s own, but for the sake of the average blog-reader’s attention span, I won’t. However, I have a ton of notes, so I might do dedicated reviews for each story and link them all together in one big master post. Let me know what you’d think about that! I think it could be a fun way to pay tribute to each of these authors and their respective stories.
Anyway, as a whole I really enjoyed this anthology. I loved that I could read it in any order I wanted, whenever I wanted. I immediately skipped to the story The Silk Blade by Natalie C. Parker, as I was so excited to see what she had written. I found that most of the stories were quite interesting and compelling. A few were spin offs or origin stories of other characters, who I didn’t really feel invested in. Also, since there were a variety of different authors, some of whom I had never read before, I wasn’t completely sold on some writing styles, but that’s totally just a personal preference. The stories were all very interesting and different, and I liked how they all approached the general theme of wishes in a variety of different ways.
I think that this book would make a great gift for YA readers who love any of the authors featured in this anthology. I think that even reluctant readers might be able to find a newfound love for reading in this anthology, due to its amount of diverse representation! I’ll give the anthology as a whole 4/5 stars, with individual reviews to come!
Moodboard
Thanks for reading! Are you planning on reading this book soon? Let me know in the comments below!
Follow me on Instagram for book pictures, mini-reviews, and more!
Check out my shop, Total Bookish Eclipse!
Starlight-Reads 
Leave a Reply