"She looked the word bigarurre up and found that it meant both "a medley of sundry colors running together" and "a discourse running oddly and fantastically, from one matter to another... other definitions include "delightful" and "bloody well made my day."

As I was reading through this book, I kept writing down words that I thought would help me to describe it to you as they came to mind. And then I arrived at this passage two thirds of the way through and immediately marked the page because it is the perfect description of this book. 

What is Not Yours is Not Yours is a collection of stories connected only delicately by subject matter but entirely by a theme/motif. Each story is built around the idea of keys - key to a door, key to a secret, the key to a heart. This theme isn't always very obvious and I admit I need to go back through and read this book again before I will entirely understand it. But, I'm not even a little bit upset about that. A book that holds more mysterious than can be unfolded in one read is one worth keeping on the shelf.

What I loved most about this book was the feeling of it. It felt playful, surreal, mysterious, and alluring, yet eerie, haunting, and strange. Half of the time I couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what was not, especially during Is Your Blood As Red As This?. Drownings and Dornicka and the St. Martin's Day Goose felt like fairy tales or folklore; Book and Roses felt much like The Secret Garden and Beauty and the Beast combined (who doesn't want to inherit a huge library where you fall in love?!); Presence had elements of a sci-fi or psychological thriller; and then there are stories that feel more like every day, like "Sorry" Doesn't Sweeten her Tea, A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society, Freddy Barrandov checks... in?. and If a Book is Locked There's Probably a Good reason for That Don't You Think. But even these had just a hint of magic - a whispering book, a house of locks, a mysterious visitor, a haunting. There was just this myriad of different styles and stories and I loved every minute of it. 

p.s. There were six f-bombs and a spattering of other swears, but honestly, very mild. None of it felt abrasive, even the f-bombs. They were kind of just slipped in and then slipped away just as fast. If I wasn't being so vigilant, I probably would have missed most of them. There are a couple passing mentions of sex, but just mentions, until Freddy Barrandov checks...in?. There was one paragraph where the main character is describing getting a more than just handsy with his neighbor which was too descriptive for my taste. That story held little to no interest for me entirely, you could skip the whole thing and not be sad.