I had a great time with this anthology. I loved seeing how these authors came up with new and fresh stories around these tropes you've seen a million times before. Also, the diversity in this collection was amazing. Most stories feature a queer relationship and a lot of the stories also have characters of colors. It's just nice to see so many identies represented in a collection that's all about tropes as most of the time we see these tropes being done it's white, straight, cis people in the lead of it all. I also really like how all the stories were so different from each other. So yeah, I did have a bit of a mixed bag with these stories seperately but I think overall this collection was a very fun and cute read.

A very sweet anthology filled with some of the best tropes. Despite being romance-focused, it explored many different genres that were enhanced by a diverse representation of characters amongst the short stories. I do admit that I read this in order of the tropes I was feeling at the time, and enjoyed some stories more than others. In some stories, it was difficult to feel a connection with the main characters as they were so short, but I'm taking that as a good sign that it left me wanting more :)

This is a pretty sweet anthology of romance tropes, fifteen stories by fifteen authors, most with queer mains and poc rep and written in genres ranging from contemporary to fantasy and historical fiction. Some sci-fi, too, in the mix. As always with anthologies it was a little hit-and-miss - one or two were a struggle to get through, but most of them were pretty fun; a special shoutout to my favourites, Unfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacks by Rebecca Kim Well, The Passover Date by Laura Silverman, Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Malinda Lo, and Disaster by Rebecca Podos.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

When I heard about this anthology, I was definitely excited. I'm a big fan of anthologies and a big fan of tropes, so this obviously sounded like something I'd be interested in. However, I found most of the stories in here just fell flat for me, and just weren't my thing.

I've decided to rate each story individually, mainly because I'm a sucker for details. In parenthesis next to each author's name, I've put the trope that the story is listed under in the book!

Silver and Gold by Natasha Ngan (snowed in together) - 3.5 stars
If someone were to have described the premise of this story to me, I definitely would have been intrigued! The snowed in together trope is honestly such a fun one, and I love to read it. Something about this story just didn't hit right with me, though, and I was kind of bored with it.

Five Stars by Amy Spalding (mistaken identity) - 4 stars
Again, mistaken identity is such a fun trope, so I was looking forward to this! It turned out to be a light, fun addition to the collection, and I definitely enjoyed it. It does feel slightly ironic to give a story titled "Five Stars" four stars, but here we are.

Unfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacks by Rebecca Kim (kissing under the influence) - 3 stars
I feel like this story had so much potential...if it were a full-length novel. Instead, we're pushed right into the middle of the story, and even by the end of it, I was still confused by the lack of worldbuilding.

Edges by Ashley Herring Blake (the grumpy one and the soft one) - 3.5 stars
Again, one of my favorite tropes! The only thing I put in my notes was "just okay," though, and I don't really remember too much.

What Makes Us Heroes by Julian Winters (hero vs. villain) - 3.5 stars
I can definitely see this being a story that people will enjoy, but superheroes tend not to be my think when it comes to stories, and this was just another example of that. The relationship itself was really cute, though!

And by Hannah Moskowitz (love triangle) - 3 stars
I feel like the love triange is typically over-done, so this was a nice, fresh take on it! I'd never read a story (that I can recall) that focused on polyamory. I'm not a big fan of stories told in second person, though, so that definitely lowered the rating.

My Best Friend's Girl by Sara Farizan (best friend's girlfriend) - 3 stars
A trope I'm not a big fan of mixed with more superheroes is a story I probably won't be a fan of. And, wouldn't you believe it, that happened here too. I think having the two superhero stories sitting so close to each other in the anthology didn't help its case, either.

(Fairy)like Attracts Like by Claire Kann (mutual pining) - 4 stars
This is one of my favorite tropes of all time, and this story ended up being so cute!! The pining felt a little rushed, but of course, it's a short story, so that's sort of to be expected. I would definitely read a full-length novel version of this!

These Strings by Lilliam Rivera (sibling's hot best friend) - 2.5 stars
I'll be honest, this was probably my least favorite of the anthology. The dialogue felt very stilted and awkward, and regardless of how much reasoning you give it, having the main character's name be extremely similar to your own just feels off to me.

The Passover Date by Laura Silverman (fake dating) - 5 stars
I'll be honest, Silverman's story is 100% the reason why I requested this anthology. Recommended for You was so cute, and I was really hoping for something like that. It definitely delivered! It was such a sweet, wholesome one, and probably one of my favorites in the collection!

Bloom by Rebecca Barrow (love transcends space and time) - 3 stars
The only thing I have in my notes for this is, and I quote "huh." Thank you, past Alli, for your enlightening thoughts. Clearly, it didn't leave that much of an impression on me, since I'm struggling to even recall the synopsis for this one. I'm rating it a nice 3 stars to play it safe.

Teed Up by Gloria Chao (oblivious to lovers) - 3 stars
This one was cute enough, but nothing incredibly special, in my opinion. I also felt like it didn't really keep with the 'oblivious to lovers' theme, but that may just be me being nitpicky.

Boys Noise by Mason Deaver (only one bed at the inn) - 3.5 stars
This is another one of those stories where I definitely think there will be a group of people who enjoy it, but I'm just not one of them. The story itself was pretty endearing, but I'm not a big fan of boy bands, which I felt impacted how much I enjoyed it. I also felt like the trope was barely used, which is a shame, because it's another one of my all-time favorites.

Girls Just Want to have Fun by Malinda Lo (secret royalty) - 4 stars
This was a pleasant surprise! I'd recently read Lo's historical fiction (Last Night at the Telegraph Club), but I'd never read any science fiction or fantasy by her. It was certainly a fun read, and I think this just proves I'll have to check out more of her writing soon!

Disaster by Rebecca Podos (second chance romance) - 5 stars
I feel very conflicted on how to review this one, honestly. According to my notes, I loved this. I couldn't belive the ending, and I found it amazing. ...However I can't remember anything that happened, now. I'm going to keep the five star for the time being, but I might come back and revisit that.

Overall, this really didn't live up to my expectations. I think it could have been really well done, but it sort of just fell flat. The amount of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC rep was great, though!

An average anthology where there a few hits but most are average. I like the representation and range of genres and tropes, but there were only two I really enjoyed and had to dnf several. This will probably be the last anthology I try to read because I always struggle with them

Lovely read! All the short stories had a different feeling but all of them had someone stupiditly in love with someone else, also all the representation was so diverse and cute! Loved how we also got lots of genres, we had contemporary , fantasy, adventure...And the best part is that it gave me a taste of some authors I've never read anything by them and now I'm definitely going to check it out!

Fools In Love is a romantic anthology with short stories written by Rebecca Barrow, Ashley Herring Blake, Gloria Chao, Mason Deaver, Sara Farizan, Claire Kann, Malinda Lo, Hannah Moskowitz, Natasha Ngan, Rebecca Podos, Lilliam Rivera, Laura Silverman, Amy Spalding, Rebecca Kim Wells, and Julian Winters. The anthology is also edited by Ashley Herring Blake and Rebecca Podos.

This is a very unique collection of stories that features many different favorite romance tropes. It’s a very quick read.

This is a great offering for the LGBTQIA+ young adult community that didn’t exist when I was a kid. It’s good for teens to see themselves in books, especially romances, & know that it’s beautiful & ok. I enjoyed being able to hop from story to story.

What a fun compilation!

Fifteen unique stories all centered around love. This is a great casual read. Something you can pick up at random and fall into. I actually read it in a random order based off the titles, I found it made the experience so much fun as you don’t know what you’re going to dive into.

Obviously, not every story resonated with me. The first one for example, I felt needed a lot more exposition. A lot of them felt me wanting for more. But otherwise this is a great collection of short stories.

My favorite was “the Grumpy One and the Soft One” by Ashley Herring Blake. I could hear an entire book just on those two characters.

Thank you to Netgally for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

I LOVE love and anthologies and so many of these author's beautiful stories! It might be my favorite anthology since Hungry Hearts. I can't wait to display and share this title with our patrons!

This was an interesting collection of LGBTQIA YA short stories that felt like such a creative endeavor. I enjoyed that the stories were diverse - both in content and representation of characters. It was also nice that the stories were not just one scene, so you actually got context for the narrative you were jumping into.

My favorite stories were “Edges” and “What Heroes Make.”

I felt like the writing was consistently pretty good, which is not always the case with anthologies.

The stories were cute overall. It was interesting to read them from the perspective of an adult and to think about how would’ve appreciated the diversity in them as a young adult.

Thank you to NetGalley for the digital arc of Fools In Love!

When I saw Fools In Love available on Netgalley, I jumped on my chance to get an arc. I’ve been so excited to read Mason and Julian’s stories since this book was first announced. But sadly, as a whole this book didn’t live up to my expectations.

Pitched as fresh takes on classic romance tropes, Fools In Love was just an okay read in my opinion. There are definitely some gems (such as Mason and Julian’s stories and a handful of others), and almost all the stories are queer or otherwise diverse (sooo many sapphic stories in here it was great). But, that being said, I just didn’t have as much fun with these stories and characters as I had hoped. It almost felt like the tropes, which in my opinion should have been front and center and played up, were pushed to the side in favor of a plot too convoluted for a short story.

Regardless of my personal opinion though, I’d still recommend this book to anyone that’s looking for a couple fun stories (mostly) about queer kids falling in love in different silly ways (seriously there’s some weird ones in here like a story that revolves around a family’s puppet business), as well as to anyone who wants to support these authors!

Fools in Love is a sweet and fun new collection for lovers of YA and romance. Collecting some of YA's most popular authors, Fools in Love will leave readers head over heels for these stories.

3.5!

I loved this anthology of twists on some of my favorite romance tropes and I adored the amount of LGBTQ+ rep in these pages. It didn't feel thrown in to meet a requirement because more than half the stories had queer MCs! The book also had Fat MCs, Jewish MCs, Black MCs, Latinx MCs, Asian
MCs. There's tons of rep here that I absolutely adored and I loved getting to read them all together here in one book.

When I picked this up, I decided to read it in order of which tropes I enjoy the most but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed some of the stories with tropes I wasn't looking forward to. The love triangle one almost broke me it was so good and I would pay good money for an entire book about those characters.

These stories are also full of magic, space, time travel, monsters, disasters, superheroes and some just plain old contemporary settings for romance. It felt like reading fanfiction in the best way.

Some of these were a little too cheesy or overdone for me to handle but I often reminded myself that they're YA stories and young adults have a lot of big feelings (same tbh I can't imagine outgrowing them lol)! I think the demographic this book is intended for will love it, but I still think older readers will enjoy it as well.

My ratings of each story:
- Silver and Gold by Natasha Ngan: 4/5
- Five Stars by Amy Spalding: 2/5
- Unfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacks by Rebecca Kim Wells: 4/5
- Edges by Ashley Herring Blake: 3.5/5
- What Makes Us Heroes by Julian Winters: 2/5
- And by Hannah Moskowitz: 5/5
- My Best Friend’s Girl by Sara Farizan: 3/5
- (Fairy)Like Attracts Like by Claire Kann: 3/5
- These Strings by William Rivera: 1/5
- The Passover Date by Laura Silverman: 4/5
- Bloom by Rebecca Barrow: 4/5
- Teed Up by Gloria Chao: 3.5/5
- Boys Noise by Mason Deaver: 2/5
- Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Malinda Lo: 2/5
- Disaster by Rebecca Podos: 3/5

Thank you to Penguin Teen and Netgalley for an arc of this book!


This anthology has twists on romance tropes! Each story is a different trope, and let me tell you, these are wonderful! This might be one of my favorite anthologies ever. Each story is unique, diverse, and interesting. I loved every single one of them!

My favorite story in this collection is the one by Mason Deaver! They did such a fantastic job and I absolutely loved it.

Pub Date: 12/7/21

I really liked this book. I’m getting more and more into short stories and anthologies. I think my favorite was Gloria Chao’s take on oblivious of lovers and Lillian Rivera’s take on fake dating. I was really glad to get a look at some more of these authors works and hope to eventually check out more of the work(s) by some of these authors.

I love tropes. Inject them into me. I love almost all of them. So imagine my excitement of about a YA anthology covering the tropes.

Usually, when I read anthologies, I have that yearning for these to be turned into longer pieces, thus defeating the whole purpose of an anthology of short stories. Interestingly enough, I didn’t feel that with this anthology. I thought that each story was a perfectly contained text. When each one ended, I was satisfied with where the story left off.

As is the case with anthologies, some of these spoke to me more than others. I’m not big into Sci-Fi/Fantasy so I had a tough time with those. But the contemporary ones I found to be delightful.

There are some heavy hitters here in terms of contributors and I found myself loving the stories by the authors who I gravitate towards anyway (Julian Winters and Mason Deaver).

At the end of the day, I felt a little all over the place with this anthology. I’m happy I read it but the stories that didn’t do it for me seemed to be more frequent than the stories that did.

But that’s the rub with an anthology, isn’t it? You’re never going to love all the stories.

3.5 stars rounded up.

it's a collection of short stories , that I thought might be a change from reading a novel but I didn't like them. I wasn't fully interested in the stories and I did not quite enjoy myself.

What a brilliant anthology! These stories are for those who love diversity in tried and tested romance tropes. Some stories were really good (shout out to Julian Winters and Ashley Herring Blake for my absolute favourites) and some weren't exactly for me, and that's okay.

I wish I grew up with this book as a teenager because a) I'm a sucker for romance and I always have been b) I needed diverse books back then. This anthology is a perfect Christmas gift for a teenage bookworm and I'm sure they'll spend hours reading and rereading their favourite stories.

My individual ratings are given below but take them with a grain of salt because some stories aren't usually what I gravitate towards so it took some time to wrap my head around them! But all in all, this was a quick, cute, cosy read and would probably charm you instantly.

Silver and Gold (Snowed in Together) by Natasha Ngan: ⭐⭐⭐⭐️.5/5
- Five Stars (Mistaken Identity) by Amy Spalding: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
- Unfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacks (Kissing Under the Influence) by Rebecca Kim Wells: ⭐⭐⭐️/5
- Edges (Grumpy and Sunshine) by Ashley Herring Blake: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
- What Makes Us Heroes (Hero vs. Villain) by Julian Winters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
- And (Love Triangle) by Hannah Moskowitz: ⭐⭐⭐/5
- My Best Friend’s Girl (Best Friend’s Girl) by Sara Farizan: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
- (Fairy)like Attracts Like (Mutual Pining) by Claire Kann: ⭐⭐/5
- These Strings (Sibling’s Hot Best Friend) by Lilliam Rivera: ⭐⭐⭐/5
- The Passover Date (Fake Dating) by Laura Silverman: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
- Bloom (Love Transcends Space Time) by Rebecca Barrow: ⭐⭐/5
- Teed Up (Oblivious to Lovers) by Gloria Chao: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
- Boys Noise (Only One Bed) by Mason Deaver: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
- Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Secret Royalty) by Malinda Lo: ⭐⭐⭐/5
- Disaster (Second Chance Romance) by Rebecca Podos: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Truthfully, I’m severely disappointed in this collection. At first, I thought I was the problem, but it appears lots of other readers were also let down! This is a 288-page short story collection that *dragged*. I did not read everything in this collection because I was so put off. I tried skim reading a few of the stories but what I saw just led me itching to DNF more. I read stories from my favorite authors (Natasha Ngan, Julian Winters, Mason Deaver) and adored those! But the other stories, as grateful as I am for queer representation (especially with queer characters of color) it was just not doing it for me. I appreciate the effort. I still think this has the potential to touch a lot of lives. Young queer teens will adore this, and that’s good considering they are the target audience. I also think this is good for people who want to get back into reading because diverse short story collections are a fun way to experiment with genres/authors. There are lots of sapphic stories in here, a story about a poly couple, etc. I think if you’re a queer person looking for rep, you have a good chance of finding yourself within this collection. This book is also filled with tons of romance tropes, so if you’re a sucker for those, check this out!!. Overall, this wasn’t for me, but I don’t want to discourage anyone away from giving it a chance.