Fools in Love is an anthology of short stories based on all of your favourite romantic tropes. From enemies to lovers to love triangles there is something for everyone with a fresh, modern twist on each one.

Like all anthologies there were good ones and there were ones I didn’t particularly enjoy but overall it was a lovely variety of love stories. This was also a great diverse book as it included a lot of different genders, races and sexualities. It was really well balanced.

From paranormal, to Sci fi and superheroes the romance stories are told across a wide expanse of genres to mix up the themes. It is great to see the variety of authors and the quality of writing them have produced for this selection of short stories. These authors have been picked from a variety of backgrounds and countries so they are all unique settings and characters. You are sure to find your favourite trope and romance sub genre within this book.

If you are looking for a fun read that you can dip in and out of whenever you want then you should look this up if you are into your romance stories. My favourite one is about a woman who races wolves, I won’t say anymore but you will know it when you read it.

I can't be the only one who loves curling up with a cute romance once it gets cold out– toss me into a blanket nest and feed me my favorite tropes and I'll be a happy reader.
This is such a solid romance anthology! I love how the title page for each story includes the trope it's riffing on – a very welcome organizational choice that fanfic readers will particularly appreciate. Overall, the anthology feels like a box of chocolates from your favorite store: even if every chocolate isn't your favorite flavor, it's still enjoyable, and it's still chocolate. The collection of authors here is a delight for YA readers. I'll admit I came for the Malinda Lo story, but now want to track down everything Julian Winters ("What Makes Us Heros" and Laura Silverman ("Passover Date") have written.
The stories run the gamut on genre, so I do think there's something for every reader who enjoys a little lighthearted romance and fun tropes. A great read for a cold day ft. a hot drink!

This short story anthology celebrates diverse love stories, an aspect I particularly loved. For the anthology, each author wrote a short story based on a famous trope commonly found in romance novels, such as mistaken identity, only one bed, and fake dating. I really liked reading this anthology for the diversity highlighted, both through the characters in the story but also the authors who contributed as well. There were different sexual orientations, races and religions, which is so important from a representation point of view and something I truly think we need more of, especially in young adult literature. I would've loved to have read something like this when I was young and gay, but growing up in a very religious, middle-eastern family.

I will admit that there were a few stories within this anthology that I didn't particularly enjoy. Either I didn't connect with the writing style, or I thought the pacing was off. Regardless though, there were many that I loved and I still highly recommend giving this a read.

Many thanks to Netgalley, Running Press and the contributing authors for providing me with a copy of this novel. ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

This was a mixed bag for me. There were some cute stories, but the majority felt much too short for me to get a sense of the worldbuilding and characters. I enjoyed the contemporary ones more because they didn't require as much additional worldbuilding. These stories also leaned heavily into tropes, which was promised from the description, but this included some tropes I don't personally enjoy as much.

So, overall, while more of the stories were misses than hits for me, I think there's a good chance that most YA readers will find at least one story in this collection they enjoy.

This was a delightfully inclusive anthology of YA romances with each author tackling a trope of the romance genre and putting their own spin on it. As such, there was a huge amount of diversity across the collection. Most of the stories ventured away from heteronormative standards which was wonderful to see and meant that there’s a wide range of sexualities and gender identities represented here.

As is the case with any anthology, there were some stories that I enjoyed and others that I didn’t. The ones that stood out to me most in this collection were:
- Mistaken Identity by Amy Spalding
- Unfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacks by Rebecca Kim Wells
- Edges by Ashley Herring Blake
- These Strings by Lilliam Rivera
- The Passover Date by Laura Silverman
- Boys Noise by Mason Deaver
- Disaster by Rebecca Podos

Overall, this is a great anthology that I think will be well received by YA readers especially those whose identities are maybe not as represented in existing anthologies.

Anthologies always take me a long time because it takes me a bit of time to be able to move from one story to the next, especially when a story fully pulls me in. There were so many stories in this collection that did that for me. I had never read a collection focused on romance and YA, and I can say it was a treat.

I think there's a story in here for every mood. It's a great book to have and pick up from time to time when you want to indulge in a good short romance. I was so delighted to read from authors I already love (Mason Deaver and Malinda Lo) and find a whole lot of new authors I cannot wait to read!

In my first read-through, these were my highlights: Natasha Ngan's opener "Silver and Gold" truly set the tone for the experience. Ashley Herring Blake wrote an excellent portrayal of loneliness and misunderstanding in "Edges" (this one had me tearing up, not going to lie!). Finally, "And" by Hannah Moskowitz was my favorite. The setting, the dialogue, the pacing, the characters, everything about this one was a dream come true. It enchanted me. Hannah Moskowitz, I'm about to read even your grocery list!

Thank you NetGalley and Running Press for this ARC. Also, thank you Ashley and Rebecca for putting it together so well.

This anthology has both bestselling and up-and-coming authors writing stories that center around reimagining some of the most popular tropes in the romance genre.

This was a wonderful collection of some of my absolute favorite tropes, and honestly I couldn't get enough of this anthology. There is a story for everyone that is a romance reader within this. Fake relationships, enemies to lovers. Love triangles, best friends, mistaken identities, missed connections. It also features powerful flora, a superhero and his nemesis, a fantastical sled race through snow-capped mountains, a golf tournament, the wrong ride-share, and even the end of the world.

Within this collection of genre-bending and original stories celebrates it shows how love always finds a way. It was such an enjoyable read. Thank you NetGalley for an arc of this book.

3.5 stars

YA has long been in need of many more short story collections, and we are seeing some great ones lately; this will be a welcome addition to the group.

Each of the stories in this collection focuses on a specific romantic trope and on characters who represent LGBTQIA+ identities in distinct ways. To me, the naming of the tropes is a fun, audience appropriate way to familiarize this group of readers with the nuances of romance. My hope is that folks get inspired to look for these tropes - and for these authors - in book-length romances as a next step.

For me, any text that effectively focuses on intersectional representation is already a win, but I do wish there had been a bit more variety and expansiveness within the queer representation here. Since this is a primary focus of the collection, I was hoping for/expecting a little more than I got in this area.

Like any anthology, there are some stories that I found more engaging than others, but I do think this is an enjoyable collection overall. I'll be recommending the stories - likely specific ones for specific purposes - to my students.

This is the best romance anthology I’ve ever read, and I truly believe that there is a story in here that will resonate with every reader. Fools in Love takes all of the most well-known tropes and spins them on their heads. Think “enemies to lovers,” “one bed,” “love triangle,” — you name it and it’s in here somewhere. And normally, I think of those tropes as cheesy, and overdone. But Fools in Love proved me wrong time and time again!⁣
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I think my favorite story was Bloom by Rebecca Barrow, with the trope “love transcends time and space.” In Bloom, Mera plans to travel back in time to kill the man who would end up murdering her mother. The writing and the magic system in here was so beautiful! Mera’s mother taught her flowers have magical properties, and that consuming an orange blossom can give you the power to travel in time, but you can’t control your destination. Instead of finding the man who killed her mother, Mera meets Delphine. This story was so heart-wrenching and tender, it absolutely stole my breath away.⁣
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But so many of the stories were incredible! Some of my other favorites were Five Stars by Amy Spalding, The Passover Date by Laura Silverman, and Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Melinda Lo. There were contemporary, fantasy, and sci-fi stories, and so much amazing representation! There were gay and lesbian couples, trans characters, and even a polyamorous trio, which I have never before seen in a piece of YA literature! There were Jewish characters, and Latinx characters, and Asian characters, and Black characters… this book truly had it all! Reading this made my heart so happy.⁣
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I don’t think I’ve ever been more impressed by a collection of stories. I really wasn’t sure how this was going to go when I cracked it open, but every story was wonderful to read! If you’re looking for a sweet romantic pick-me-up I promise you’ll find something special in Fools in Love! There is something in here everyone can enjoy, and I truly can’t recommend this enough! One of my favorites of the year, by far.

15 stories from 15 different authors with diverse characters and various plot lines. I'm not a fan of anthologies by this was very interesting to read. I didn't read the whole thing but so far And by Hannah Moskowitz is my favourite.
Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for providing me with the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Short story collections are a challenging field, and at times it was difficult to stay motivated on finishing the book as a whole. However, each individual story was gold (except that middle one that was written in second person….hard pass on that). The varied and consistent queer representation was a delightful surprise and the inventive interpretations of the tropes was like…opening a birthday present in each chapter!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fools In Love is a short-story collection featuring reimagined romance tropes. Perfect for a YA audience, these stories offer a wealth of worlds and characters to fall in love with. Each piece was fresh, interesting, exciting, and diverse.

I don't have a ton to say about this collection, other than that I really, really enjoyed myself. Each story offered something new, and while some were a lot stronger in terms of character and world building than others, overall I left feeling quite satisfied with my reading experience. My favorite story was the last one, Disaster by Rebecca Podos. It had an interesting premise, but it wasn't so overcomplicated that I was focusing on the setup rather than the romance. I also particularly enjoyed The Passover Date by Laura Silverman and Bloom by Rebecca Barrow.

I also think that this anthology is important. Every single piece represented not just a different trope, but a different type of relationship, with characters with a range of identities. And every single one of them ended with joy. There are so, so many young readers who will be able to pick up this anthology and see themselves somewhere on the page, and that is incredibly valuable.

Fools in Love is an anthology of young adult romance short stories by a number of rising authors, with each story taking a pretty well known romance trope and running with it. For those who come to my blog for SciFi and Fantasy reviews, rest assured that Fools in Love comes with a bunch of Fantasy and SciFi Romance stories, although not every story fits in this category. What they all do have, like any good romance story, is a Happy Ever After ending (HEA), even as they feature a bunch of very different backgrounds for those relationships to emerge.

And this is an absolutely lovely anthology that's a lot of fun and has just the right amount of charm you'd hope for stories like this. The romance stories feature people and relationships of all backgrounds - Straight and Queer, Cis and Trans, different Religions, Races and Cultures, etc. - and they're generally all done well. A few stories are merely good rather than great, but some are real highlights, and even the more basic ones at least are charming and enjoyable, as you'd expect from romance stories.

More specifics and highlights after the jump:


This anthology features the following stories (and the Tropes they supposedly feature):

Silver and Gold (Trope featured: Snowed in Together) by Natasha Ngan

Five Stars (Trope featured: Mistaken Identity) by Amy Spalding

Unfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacks (Trope featured: Kissing under the Influence) by Rebecca Kim Wells

Edges (Trope featured: The Grumpy One and the Soft One) by Ashley Herring Blake

What Makes Us Heroes (Trope featured: Hero vs Villain) by Julian Winters

And (Trope Featured: Love Triangle) by Hannah Moskowitz

My Best Friend's Girl (Trope Featured: Best Friend's Girlfriend) by Sara Farizan

(Fairy)Like Attracts Like (Trope Featured: Mutual Pining) by Claire Kann

These Strings (Trope Featured: Sibling's Hot Best Friend) by Lilliam Rivera

The Passover Date (Trope Featured: Fake Dating) by Laura Silverman

Bloom (Trope Featured: Love Transcends Space Time) by Rebecca Barlow

Teed Up (Trope Featured: Oblivious to Lovers) by Gloria Chao

Boys Noise (Trope Featured: Only One Bed) by Mason Deaver

Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Trope Featured: Secret Royalty) by Malinda Lo

Disaster (Trope Featured: Second Chance Romance) by Rebecca Podos

Again, all are highly enjoyable and feature relationships of multiple varieties, but a few are clear highlights, at least for me.

Unfortunately Blobs do not Eat Snacks is an adorable fantasy romance, featuring two teen girl magic students on their practical final exam, with one girl being essentially the personification of Order and the other being basically chaotic, and them falling in love as the test winds up more and more awry.

What Makes Us Heroes features a black teen superhero regretting the end of his M-M relationship with a more popular white superhero, and then realizing that despite his parents pushing him towards that hero for popularity sake, what he really loves is the boy he grew up with who turned into a "Villain" - whose villainous acts are well intentioned and taking shots at the system (in case you missed the subtlety, Malcolm X is explicitly referenced in the dialogue).

Bloom by Rebecca Barlow is really great, as it takes a classic trope of a young woman going back in time and falling in love with someone from the past, but the person turns out to be the daughter of the man she was sent back to kill....and then seemingly she's separated from that person by time - or is she? Well, it's a romance so obviously there's a happy ending and it's very very sweet.

Teed Up by Gloria Chao is really cute as it portrays an Asian teen girl golfer competing in the US Junior Boy's Amateur, a girl who was pushed to do golf by her Asian parents and who has so much doubts about whether she really wants to do this, and trauma from a prior boy who dated her just to exploit her popularity, only to find a boy who doesn't really care about success who actually wants to cheer her on. It's some really great stuff.

Really the best of these stories are typically ones that mix the romance with other concepts and thoughts, like Teed Up and What Makes Us Heroes, which deal also with the intersection of race and parental pressure. The Passover Date for example also deals with why parents pressure their kids to date at all and how that's not fair, Disaster features a misunderstanding in an F-F relationship due to one girl being Bi and the other being Lesbian, as well as one girl essentially being closeted to her parents, Boys Noise features a secretly trans boy in a boy band on a surprise trip with the fellow band member he crushes on - but their contract prevents them from daring to be gay openly and he feels so chafed by it all, etc.

And again even the other stories are fine and enjoyable, even if they aren't anything you've probably read before or might have read better (the polyamorous "And" suffers for me from the fact that I read a similar story, ALSO in second person, in a different anthology just a week before, for example). The result is an anthology that is just a ton of fun, and if you enjoy romance, this will be really up your alley.

Reading this anthology has been so much fun.

Fools In Love is filled with all of the best romance tropes (from "there's only one bed" to "my best friend's girl" and everything in between) ready to warm the hearts of anyone who chooses to pick it up. There is a trope in here for everyone but only true romance lovers know which is the best trope*

Kudos to Rebecca Podos for curating such a cohesive short stories that are quick and easy to fall into.

My favourite stories in here:

Unfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacks (Kissing Under the Influence) - Rebecca Kim Wells (sapphic, magical, hijinks)

What Makes Us Heroes (Hero versus Villain) - Julian Winters (queer, banter, adorable)

The Passover Date (Fake Dating) - Laura Silverman (best trope ever*, awkward, obliviously cute)

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with anthologies. I love them because I can read a short story here and there without having to invest too much time in a whole novel. But I find that not every story in a collection interests me.

That was what happened with this collection. There were a couple stand outs to me (Mistaken Identity was prob one of my faves. It was so cute and I smiled the whole time I was reading that one!) but there were some duds that I DNFed.

This book was read thanks to NetGalley

I loved this anthology, it's a good mix of stories that literally have a good material for everyone.
Quick, cute and lovable love stories. I recommend this book to all the book lovers.

I received an ARC from the publisher and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
This anthology has a fun concept, although it does suffer from each story being too short. I enjoyed some, found others interesting, while others were skippable. I loved Natasha Ngan’s immersive “snowed in” story, as well as Amy Spalding’s fun take on mistaken identity to start off the collection. Claire Kann, Gloria Chao, and Malinda Lo also had some lovely stories. But then, there were some odd ones like the contributions by Rebecca Kim Wells, Julian Winters, and Rebecca Podos which felt like they could have benefited from more space to elaborate on complex concepts. However, a mixed bag is only to be expected with a collection from so many different authors, and I love that it features each one writing a different trope. Whatever you like in terms of romance, at least one story will likely pique your interest!

I was lucky enough to read an ARC of Fools in Love and let me tell you, the authors names are enough to draw you in, but the stories will REALLY make you stay.

In the anthology you'll get a solid mix of tropey (in the beat way) queer romances. I Loved that its also not just cis white gays, we get BIPOC characters who are all flavors of queer!!!

Now a few of the stories did drag a little, or seem to stray too far from the main character development, but nothing that i would overtly pass by.

Overall- Grab your copy, cozy up with a good snack and read some heartwarming YA romances 💛💛💛

(Review has been posted on Goodreads)

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 :)