Fools In Love: Fresh Twists on Romantic Tales

by Rebecca Barrow, Ashley Herring Blake (Editor), Rebecca Podos (Editor), Gloria Chao, Mason Deaver

Overview

Join fifteen bestselling, award-winning, and up-and-coming authors as they reimagine some of the most popular tropes in the romance genre. 

Fake relationships. Enemies to lovers. Love triangles and best friends, mistaken identities and missed connections. This collection of genre-bending and original stories celebrates how love always finds a way, featuring 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. With 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 this collection is sure to sweep you off your feet. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762472352
Publisher:	Running Press Book Publishers
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Ashley Herring Blake is a reader, writer, and mom to two boisterous boys. She holds a Master's degree in teaching and loves coffee, arranging her books by color, and cold weather. She is the author of the young adult novels Suffer Love, How to Make a Wish, and Girl Made of Stars (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and the middle grade novels Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World and The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James. Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World was a Stonewall Honor Book, as well as a Kirkus, School Library Journal, NYPL, and NPR Best Book of 2018. Her YA novel Girl Made of Stars was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her sixth book, Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea, releases March 2021. She lives in Georgia.

Rebecca Podos' debut novel, The Mystery of Hollow Places, was a Junior Library Guild Selection and a B&N Best YA Book of 2016. Her second book, Like Water, won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Children's and Young Adult. The Wise and The Wicked, her third novel, was recently released. A graduate of the Writing, Literature and Publishing Program at Emerson College, she's an agent at the Rees Literary Agency in Boston by day.
 

Editorial Reviews

11/01/2021

Fifteen authors offer up tales inspired and informed by classic romance tropes in this pleasing anthology, which delivers an enjoyable selection of kisses, confessions, and happy-for-nows. Alongside a variety of character backgrounds, gender identities, and pairings, editors and contributors Blake (Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea) and Podos (The Wise and the Wicked) curate a range of moods, genres, and themes. In Malinda Lo’s Chinese-inspired speculative “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” fix-it genius Fei Cheng encounters a runaway princess aboard a space station. Julian Winters’s “What Makes Us Heroes” sees Black superhero-in-training Shai finding common ground with golden-complexioned, former friend-turned-villain Kyan at a coffee shop. Realistic contemporaries include Amy Spalding’s “Five Stars,” which involves a white teen being mistaken for a rideshare driver, and Mason Deaver’s “Boys Noise,” in which two white members of a popular boy band—one cis, one trans—escape their handlers for an unsupervised birthday excursion to New York City. Fun and frothy, this is a candy box of romantic stories boasting joyful, satisfying conclusions. Ages 13–up. Agent: Rebecca Podos, Rees Literary. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"With nonbinary protagonists and an overall strong LGBTQ+ representation, this anthology gives all readers hope that love is out there for everyone."
 —Booklist

"From meet-cutes to frenemies to long-gestating feelings, this anthology offers a pleasurable assortment of love connections. Delightful, romantic fun."

—Kirkus

 For readers with a fear of commitment to a long story or those who like to play the field before settling down, these anthologies offer a sampling of romance tropes from some of YA’s best-loved authors.
 —Publishers Weekly

This was an entertaining read with great diversity and inclusion. What’s not to like?!—Teen Librarian Toolbox

From the Publisher

2021-11-16
Fifteen notable YA authors take on romantic tropes.

Each entry centers on a familiar romance plot convention—named in the story’s subtitle—with the settings and characters’ identities bringing additional variety. In Laura Silverman’s “The Passover Date: Fake Dating,” 18-year-old Rachel Ableman ropes in her middle school crush, Matthew Pearlman, to attend a chaotic family Seder. In Julian Winters’ “What Makes Us Heroes: Hero vs. Villain,” Black superhero-to-be Shai encounters his estranged friend and maybe-villain-in-training, Kyan, while waiting for his ex-boyfriend. While romance naturally is at the forefront, themes of identity, belonging, and social status are developed in many stories. Some protagonists take on patriarchal norms: Gloria Chao’s “Teed Up: Oblivious to Lovers” sees Taiwanese American Sunny Chang competing as the sole female golfer in a junior championship, while Lili Marin of Lilliam Rivera’s “These Strings: Sibling’s Hot Best Friend” longs to take a creative leadership role in the family business, a Latinx traveling puppet theater. In several stories, characters reflect on gender and sexual orientation. For example, Lev from Mason Deaver’s “Boys Noise: Only One Bed at the Inn” plays hooky and takes a trip to New York City with a fellow member of his boy band; he reflects on being gay and trans and the toll of the professional contract that keeps him closeted. From meet-cutes to frenemies to long-gestating feelings, this anthology offers a pleasurable assortment of love connections.

Delightful, romantic fun. (author bios) (Romance anthology. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews