A Review of Fools In Love
Story Reviews #2
Story Reviewed Today:
Fools in Love: Fresh Twists on Romantic Tales
Edited by Rebecca Podos and Ashley Herring Blake
With stories 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
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Itâs February⊠which means itâs time for a month of romantic book reviews!
(Also, I read a lot of cozy stories with romance, so many of my early reviews happen to be love stories and I thought this month would be fitting to drop some romantic book reviews!)
A Brief Synopsis of Each Short Story:
âSilver and Goldâ (Snowed In Together): fantasy wolf-sledding tournament (fantasy)
âFive Starsâ (Mistaken Identity): non-ridesharerâs crush gets into her car, thinking sheâs a rideshare (realistic fiction)
âUnfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacksâ (Kissing Under the Influence): witches on mission for an exam (fantasy)
âEdgesâ (The Grumpy One and the Soft One): grumpy loner loves popular, sunny one (realistic fiction)
âWhat Makes Us Heroesâ (Hero vs. Villain): superhero and sorta-villain in a coffee shop (fantasy)
âAndâ (Love Triangle): girl falling for boyfriendâs friend (realistic fiction)
âMy Best Friendâs Girlâ (Best Friendâs Girlfriend): girl in love with superhero BFFâs girlfriend (fantasy)
âFairy(like) Attracts Likeâ (Mutual Pining): girl with curse falling for someone despite her curse (fantasy)
âThese Stringsâ (Siblingâs Hot Best Friend): girl in puppet family business falling for guy and standing up for her ideas (realistic fiction)
âThe Passover Dateâ (Fake Dating): girl needs mandatory date for Seder (realistic fiction)
âBloomâ (Love Transcends Space-Time): girl goes back in time with flower magic to avenge her mother (fantasy/sci-fi)
âTeed Upâ (Oblivious to Lovers): girl is only golfer in âboysâ event (realistic fiction)
âBoys Noiseâ (Only One Bed at the Inn): two boyband members sneak off for a trip alone (realistic fiction)
âGirls Just Want to Have Funâ (Secret Royalty): mechanic girl encounters newcomer to city (fantasy/sci-fi)
âDisasterâ (Second-Chance Romance): girl alone on school campus at a literal Y2K apocalypse (fantasy)
Overall Pros
Alright, so this has become my favorite short story anthology.
I typically either a) like only a few stories from an anthology or b) dislike all of the stories.
This is the FIRST anthology in which Iâve either loved or liked all of the stories. I adored the concept for this anthology, but Iâd also adored the concept for Hungry Hearts and ended up not vibing with it, to the point where I didnât finish it. (That was the first book I DNF-ed last year, actually.)
Fools In Love is another story entirely.
Here we have a collection of fresh short stories inspired by classic romance tropes.
I really enjoyed âSilver and Goldâ (the âSnowed In Togetherâ trope) by Natasha Ngan, âUnfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacksâ (âKissing Under the Influenceâ) by Rebecca Kim Wells, âWhat Makes Us Heroesâ (Hero vs. Villainâ) by Julian Winters, and âBoys Noiseâ (Only One Bed at the Innâ) by Mason Deaver.
I was actually surprised which ones I enjoyed the most in some cases, as I either hadnât read a story with that trope or donât typically enjoy that trope. So Iâm glad I read each story and that I read them in the order they appeared.
Not that you have to read them in order. I considered skipping to the tropes I was most interested in, but I liked seeing how the editors chose to arrange it.
I see the way editors set up anthologies as similar to how musical artists set the order of the tracks on an album. In either case, Iâd like to listen to the album or read the book in the order they gave it to me in first. Then I can go back to listen or read my favorites!
I didnât really like the idea of the âkissing under the influenceâ trope because that phrase makes me nervous that it might be iffy on the basis of consent, but âUnfortunately, Blobs Do Not Eat Snacksâ wasnât like that. (I feel like thatâs not the greatest title for that trope?) This one is a fun witch story that gave me some The Invisible Library slash sorta Simon Snow trilogy vibes that I enjoyed quite a lot.
I am an absolute sucker for hero-villain stories, particularly of the superhero/supervillain variety, so I really enjoyed âWhat Makes Us Heroes.â I also super like (heh, get it?) when the villain is really more of an antagonist than an actual baddie, so this story had all the bases covered.đ
Interestingly enough, I read this collection a few weeks after having read the free teaser comic for Galaxy: The Prettiest Star given out at Free Comic Book Day â22 and drew quite a few connections between that and the story âMy Best Friendâs Girlâ (âBest Friendâs Girlfriendâ) by Sara Farizan. I checked the author names on the comic, but they didnât match. (My guess was that they might be in the same âGalaxyâ universe and the main character in the comic could be âGalaxy Girlâ from the short story, but I canât tell.)
 âAndâ (âLove Triangleâ) by Hannah Moskowitz was the second story Iâve read with three characters falling in love with one another. The story started as a love triangle and transformed into a love story between three people, much like the relationship between three of our main characters in the webcomic Muted (which I started and finished very quickly last year because it was so good).
Iâm not a love triangle person for the most part. The drama stresses me out!
âThe Passover Dateâ by Laura Silverman was sweet, but I was mildly annoyed about whether or not a high schooler could afford a giant wheel of cheese, until I went to the grocery store and looked at cheddar cheese wheel prices to confirm.
To confirm, cheddar cheese wheels in my area are apparently about $50-$60, which would have been price-y but could still have been possibly reasonable to bring as a gift for a crush in my high school days.
I did also like the point about family tradition and how being forced to bring a date to family events is unfair; just because something is tradition doesnât mean it should stay. Tradition never automatically equals good, which is a theme throughout several of these stories.
I see a similar theme carried in âThese Stringsâ (Siblingâs Hot Best Friendâ) by Lilliam Rivera, âTeed Upâ (Oblivious to Loversâ) by Gloria Chao, and âWhat Makes Us Heroesâ with parents blatantly ignoring their childâs emotions, needs, and wants in the name of tradition.
I expected to like âBoys Noiseâ the moment I saw that it was about boyband characters, because I love Alice Osemanâs I Was Born For This. And if you enjoyed that book, Iâd definitely recommend this story because it has such similar vibes.
If you liked The Lunar Chronicles, specifically Cinder, we get very similar vibes from âGirls Just Want to have Funâ (Secret Royaltyâ) by Malinda Lo because secret royalty and mechanic girl in a sci-fi location during a festival.
Overall Cons
While I did like every story in some way, there were a few issues I noted.
My biggest issue was the situation in âFive Starsâ that would be problematic in real life but isnât presented that way in the story because romance.
In this story, we have someone getting into the wrong car and the driver leaving with them in the car anyway. And lying about it because theyâre anxious and they have a crush on the person who got into the car. It eventually gets resolved and things are okay in the end, but what if the characters werenât actually attracted to each other? Thatâs a pretty creepy situation if you look at it through the lens of the characters not being attracted to each other!
Secondly, the ending of âBloomâ confuses me a fair bit. Like, I understand that it ends up alright, but the way they actually reach each other through time confuses me. Even after rereading the last two pages, which explain the reunion, I still donât understand how it worked. I just kind of gave up trying to understand because I honestly really dislike time travel tropes, so this was the story I was least looking forward to. The story was still a decent read for the most part, but the ending was just vague and confusing, as most time travel stories always seem to be when I read them.
And finally: I guess this one isnât necessarily a con, but the ending is a bit unclear for âDisaster,â as the way Podos wrote it makes it feel intentional. I just donât particularly like that itâs sort of ambiguous if things are okay or not. Like, I think they are, but the last line throws me off, which I think itâs meant to.Â
Rating
Overall, Iâd rate this anthology as a whole a 4 out of 5 stars. (Iâd give each story a different rank individually, but Iâm ranking them together because theyâre presented as a whole.)
Itâs my favorite anthology so far and I really enjoyed it, but I didnât absolutely adore it (which would make it a 5/5 star).
Anyway, thanks so much for stopping by! If you liked this review, feel free to give it a like and maybe subscribe if you wanna see what Iâll do next.
Most of all, I hope you have a day as wonderful as you are!
Happy reading!
Fun Fact:
Itâs convenient that I had checked this book out as the same time as Delilah Green Doesnât Care by Ashley Herring Blake, given that she co-edited this anthology and wrote the short story âEdges.â
A side note, but when I opened Delilah Green Doesnât Care, the dedication is to Rebecca Podos, co-editor of Fools in Love. Sweet!