This is a hard collection of stories to rate! It is a collection that plays on classic romantic tropes which to be honest, I am a sucker for most of them. However, instead of feeling fresh, a lot of them felt reused. They didn't really bring anything new or unique. With that being said, I did love a few of them and thought they were well written! I also appreciated the diversity that was represented in some of the stories! Unfortunately, majority of them fell short (pun intended), and left me wanting more.

I loved this book of short stories! This is a book of YA short stories, and they’ve taken ten romantic tropes and transformed them in new ways. My favorites were Fake Dating, Stranded Together, Best Friend Love Epiphany, and The Makeover. Best Friend Love Epiphany was the first writing I’d ever read by Caleb Roehrig, and I was not disappointed. I read this on audiobook so I read most of this one in the shower and I maybe cried a little bit while reading it. There’s a lot to love in this collection - I didn’t dislike any of the stories in it!

“Bye, Bye, Piper Berry” by Julie Murphy focuses around the fake dating trope, and this is one of my favorite tropes of all time and I loved this one. The love interest of this story, Gabe, is explicitly described as chubby in this one, and one of the quotes is “You’re fat, but who cares? That’s not even a bad thing anyways!” which I found very good.

“Anyone Else but You” by Leah Johnson has the “stranded together” trope and it’s fantastic, Leah Johnson has my whole heart, she’s so funny and such a smart writer! It’s about two co-presidents who get trapped in a store together overnight and one thing leads to another — this is a really really good f/f story.

“Auld Acquantance” by Calebe Roehrig, which features the “best friend love epiphany” trope, was possibly my favorite short story in the collection; my heart swelled with worry and fondness for these two boys figuring out love and who will kiss whom at midnight.

“Shooting Stars” by Marissa Meyer is about the “Only One Bed” trope. I’ve also never read anything by Marissa Meyer but I’ve heard a lot of good things! It’s about Misty who goes on a senior class trip and she keeps getting into situations with her crush, Roman, where there’s only one bed between them. It’s super super cute and sweet.

“Zora in the Spotlight” by Elise Bryant is about the “grand romantic gesture” trope, and it does involve someone popping out of a large pink cell phone. To say anything else would be a spoiler; but I will say that this story uses Instagram and social media in a way that feels Actually Correct and not weird in the way that most literature often is.

“In the Blink of an Eye” by Elizabeth Eulberg is the trope “trapped in a confined space” together. I really liked this one because it’s not a romance story between the two main characters - and they’re both autistic or autistic-coded; the main character’s special interest is London and she finally gets to go to London but then her least favorite person is there, her best friend’s boyfriend and her former crush! He’s explicitly stated to “be bad at social cues”, and I am just saying, their instant first chemistry is because they are both autistic. There’s a lot of twists in this one and each of them delighted me.

“Liberty” by Anna-Marie McLemore has “The Makeover” trope, which is about Ximena using makeup to force herself into “popular” (white, Eurocentric) beauty standards to fit in on the cheerleading team until her favorite beauty YouTuber joins the team and MAYBE THEY FALL IN LOVE? You’ll have to read it to find out! (It’s very good.)

“The Surprise Match” by Sandhya Menon with the trope Matchmaker, and its protagonist is Rosie, who is working on a matchmaker app to match up her friends. It’s really really cute, and I love the representation of Girls In STEM where it’s not explicitly called out or made out to be a super weird thing. “It’s just Duolingo, threatening me with bodily harm because I haven’t worked on my Spanish for four days.”

I received an audiobook copy of this book, and every story has a different narrator - some of the stories with multiple POVs have multiple narrators! My favorite narrator is Kristen Sieh, who narrates “Anyone Else But You” by Leah Johnson. She also narrated “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing” (and its sequel) by Hank Green, and I think she did fantastically here.

This is a really diverse collection of short stories, very much in the vein of a Dahlia Adler anthology collection. If you’ve liked her anthologies before, you’ll like this one (although it is edited by Marissa Meyer, not Dahlia Adler, to be clear). Five stars!

A collection of short stories from amazing young adult authors covering almost all the romantic tropes I could think of, what’s not to love! This book is made up of multiple short stories, most of which I enjoyed, but we all can’t love everything right? We all know I’m a sucker for character development and connection so my biggest complaint with the ones I didn’t love was a lack of connection with characters due to the shortness of the story. With that being said I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun weekend read full of romance.

What a delightful way to spend an afternoon! Filled with our favorite romantic tropes, this anthology collects the classic rom-com situations that we all love and wraps them in a delightful YA bow! Each story has a unique and beautiful message, and of course a happily ever after.

It was such a joy to listen to an audiobook with so many different voices and talented narrators. For fans of all things romance and great audio quality and performances, I highly recommend it!

Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, and Macmillan Children's for the ARC and audio ARC of this! I flipped back and forth between the audio and the ebook, and I definitely recommend both formats.

4.5 stars! This was exactly what I hoped for from this collection when I saw the description and the included authors. There was diversity within the couples, as well as the side characters, both in race and orientation, I could tell that thoughtfulness was put into collecting a variety, both in tropes and diversity. I would've liked to see some disabled characters, perhaps, or a character with a different gender expression, but overall think most readers will be able to find a character finding love that they identify with. Every story was adorable and enjoyable, none were flops for me, which can be hard to find in an anthology. My favorites were Bye Bye, Piper Baby, Auld Acquaintance, Keagan's Heaven on Earth (which did not appear to be included in the audio, as it is a comic), and The Surprise Match.

The narration was really well done, and I loved that each story was narrated by someone different, it really helped to transition between stories without keeping the last one in my head.

Serendipity has 10 short stories based on tropes: the fake relationship, stranded together, class warfare, the best friend love epiphany, one bed, the secret admirer, the grand romantic gesture, trapped in a confined space, the makeover, and the matchmaker.

Each of these stories were cute in their own way. I don’t always like short stories, as I want more details, but these were all perfect at their current length. Unfortunately, one of the stories didn’t seem to be on the audiobook I listened to – “Keagan’s Heaven on Earth” is a graphic short story, and maybe it wouldn’t have worked in audioback format. There was a lot of diversity among the stories. If you enjoy short stories, YA, and romance, I recommend checking this anthology out!

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an ALC of this book!

This anthology takes various romance tropes and seeks to diversify them with different love stories by different authors.

I absolutely loved most of these stories! They are all very cute YA contemporary love stories with different themes and types of MC's. I was confused because the editors made it clear this is meant to be diverse, but one of the stories didn't seem to have...any kind of diversity to me? Maybe I missed something though. But the rest of them were awesome! I particularly loved Anna-Marie McLemore's story!

4.25 stars

The best thing about an anthology is that you get a little bit of everything. Reinventing the one bed trope? Check! Hilarious antics that ensue when 2 teens are locked in a party store overnight? Done! And my personal favorite - a flash mob gone horribly wrong. Each story in the anthology is wildly different, from the tropes that they address to the types of love they discuss. My personal favorite was Liberty by Anna-Marie McLemore, because y'all know I love a good cheerleading story. I feel like this book is even better on audio because each story feels more episodic. When we switch authors, we switch narrators, and it really helps the anthology feel connected. This is seriously just a feel-good romcom anthology (for the most part), fit for any fans of YA or romance.

*Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an ALC in exchange for my honest review*

It is hard to give this book a rating, because I didn't enjoy all of the stories. A handful of them were somewhat enjoyable and a I would consider just a few of them to stand out as really lovely. To me, the cutest stories were Zora in the Spotlight by Elise Bryant and In A Blink of the Eye by Elizabeth Eulberg. This was a light, happy reading experience - but I wouldn't recommend it to teens unless they are unbothered by insta-love :) I do plan on purchasing this for my YA collection at a public library - and I'm sure that it will be a popular addition!

In each of these ten stories(or nine if you listened to the audiobook like I did!) we’ll known YA authors lend their hand at ten common romance tropes in this short story anthology.

Like always, short story anthologies are hit and miss. My faves were not surprising, consider fake dating and only one bed are top tier tropes for me (Julie Murphy and Marissa Meyer are also top tier for me). The diversity of the authors was really great to see, and that led to some great diverse stories! While I just didn’t connect with some, others made my heart soar? And that’s wonderful!

Also, the full cast audiobook was great! I loved that each story had narrators who fit the voices and perspectives. Some of my faves lent their voices to this as well, so I was a big fan!

Overall, this was a really fun read. While it didn’t really reinvent any of the tropes for me(as an avid romance reader, I feel like I’ve seen it all at this point) but I don’t think it needed to. This would be a great Valentine’s read!

I’m not sure these stories really do anything unique with the tropes they represent but they are each in their own sweet, readable love shorts.

I can see this being a big hit with teens.

I am usually kind of iffy about books like this with multiple short stories by different authors. Typically there are ones I don’t enjoy or even skip. This collection did not follow that usual pattern of mine. I honestly loved every single story in the book. They were all super cute and I loved how inclusive they were (with sexuality, gender, and race!) I feel like this is the perfect Valentines read. Especially for people who love love stories and the best tropes (one bed! Fake dating! Makeovers!!!)

This is a compilation of several short stories by many different authors targeted for teen & YA readers. I listened to the audio version of this release, it was also excellent with a multitude of narrators. This work was VERY WELL DONE!

The cover contains the word transformed; so ... yep ... definitely contains some LGBTQIA content in some (but not all) of the short stories. The stories are all very individual and are more about setting the stage for the story as opposed to too many uncomfortable details.

My favorite story was about a Latino cheerleader. My cousin's daughter cheers for MSU; in all the books that I've read, I've never known of a story line involving cheer. Kudos!

Thank you to NetGalley, the multitude of authors involved in this compilation ...
Marissa Meyer (Author and Editor), Elise Bryant (Author), Elizabeth Eulberg (Author), Leah Johnson, Anna-Marie McLemore (Author), Sandhya Menon (Author), Julie Murphy (Author), Caleb Roehrig (Author), Sarah Winifred Searle (Author), Abigail Hing Wen (Author)
and the publisher Feiwel Friends.

The review of this advance "read" audio was provided in exchange for an honest review.

Also ... I believe (not 100% sure) ... that the hard copy of this book might contain a graphic novel short story. That was not included as part of the audio release.

Publication date is 4 Jan 2022.

Really well done. This must have been a lot of work to coordinate. You can tell that a lot of love was included by the quality of the work.

This is the diverse YA romance anthology of my dreams!! As a romance lover-whom is going to be visiting Serendipity in a handful of days-this was such a well-done collection! I docked a star because I skipped the editor’s story due to her racism and transphobia in her past writing pieces. There were some scenes in various stories that read very cringy, but I think it added to the charm of the collection. Romance, especially romance movies, are notorious for being over the top/dramatic/and a little cringy. So, please don’t take that as a diss to this book. I ate every last bit of it up! It was so lovely seeing well-loved authors in here, as well as being introduced to new authors I will 100% be looking into. Overall, I think this is the perfect heartwarming YA anthology for romance lovers of any age.

Serendipity is a FANTASTIC anthology that includes stories from some of the most popular names in YA fiction at the moment. Every piece is inspired by a different romance trope and Meyer, the editor, did a wonderful job selecting what order they were presented in. I waffled between a four and five-star rating for this title and ultimately went with four stars because there were some stories that I enjoyed more than others, but that is almost always the case with books in this format. I highly recommend checking out Serendipity once it is published in January!

An anthology featuring YA authors writing about ten common romantic tropes.

I was initially excited about this because I love Marissa Meyer and will read anything with her name attached to it. I went into this thinking it was supposed to be common romantic tropes with a twist... and I'm not sure why I thought that... but this definitely was not that. It is an extremely fast read, and I finished it in one sitting, but I didn't find it to be anything particularly special. It did include some of my favourite tropes, so I was glad to see that and I did enjoy some of the stories more than others, but overall I wasn't blown away and it was just... meh.

Serendipity was a fantastic audiobook! I love collections of short stories and audiobooks, this book combines both beautifully! It’s a modern take on love story tropes and I loved it! The stories were the perfect length for a chore or a longer drive I loved being able to start and finish one in one sitting!

Serendipity is a sweet collection of high school romance stories, featuring diverse voices, settings, and stories.
As always in an anthology, different stories connect with different readers. I personally found "Liberty" by Anna-Marie McLemore to be far and away the best story, with "Auld Acquaintance" by Caleb Roehrig being my second favorite. I enjoyed all of these stories and that's a fantastic experience to have when reading a collection!
Saying these stories turn romance tropes on their heads is false advertising though - each author uses a specific trope to tell their romantic story. There isn't anything unusual about using an established trope in its intended way to tell a story. If the "transformative" nature was simply referring to the diverse characters and settings, then that's a sad indication of a very limited reading experience.
The narrators for the most part were great! Some were more successful than others at communicating the voice of a high school student, but no one did a bad job.
Despite being wildly too old for high school romance stories, I found this to be a very fun anthology!

It's hard to give a rating for this anthology. I read the first two stories (by Julie Murphy and Leah Johnson) and LOVED them; I started recommending Serendipity to a lot of people. Then I read the rest of the book, and they all sort of blended in together. Basically last 8 were just average. I would definitely recommend this book to a teen or to a teen classroom as I think a lot of teens will like it.

The audiobook was fun to listen to. I liked how the Narrator switched depending on the main character's voice.

Most the stories were pretty good but one bothered me a little. It was about a girl who was obsessed with London and repeatedly talked about Big Ben being her true love. She was kind who would get snotty about someone getting something wrong about London and even commented about someone using the wrong name for a tourist place in London but literally the whole story she called it Big Ben not it’s real name and it’s way too ironic. I think my favorites where the cheerleading one or the Chinese billionaire one!