Is it cheesy to say I fell in love?
I am a little shocked honestly to tell you the truth. I was not expecting to like this collection as much as I did but here we are. The overarching theme is that this is a collection of stories about two people meeting in adorable ways and (usually) forming a romantic relationship. They are almost all contemporary with only one or two having some kind of fantastical element thrown in. They are also hella gay which I am all for. No male/male romances sadly but the lesbian representation is fantastic. As this is an anthology, I'm going to break down each story with a rating and then do an overall average at the end.
Siege Etiquette, 2.5/5-Sadly one of the weakest ones starts this anthology off. A guy and a girl get stuck in a bathroom together at a party. I didn't really feel any chemistry between them and the cheating aspect unfortunately negated any potential cuteness for me.
Print Shop, 4.5/5-Yesss, getting in early with the cute lesbians. One girl starts working at a print shop and goes above and beyond to help out a girl she likes. A very cute story that I definitely wanted more of. I found the romance a little one-sided maybe but that really is a minor complaint.
Hourglass, 3/5-This is an okay story but it barely meets the criteria. It's not really a romance, it's more a story about friendship. A girl is about to graduate/have prom and she falls out with her best friend. It ended way too abruptly and I would have liked it a lot more if it continued after the end.
Click, 3/5-This was maybe the poorest story in terms of actual writing. I didn't mind the plot (two people get paired up by a futuristic dating app) but I found my interest waning which made it hard to follow. Sadly the couple weren't compelling.
The Intern, 3/5-Again, this romance wasn't very believable for me. An intern gets to show the cute rockstar around and they fall in love. Had some hidden depth and wasn't badly written but still meh.
Somewhere That's Green, 3.5/5-I AM SO TORN. Lesbians! Little Shop of Horrors! Trans people! All great elements. But I really didn't like half the pairing in this story and I felt like she wasn't a very appealing character. The idea was okay but it still made me a little uncomfortable. Ah well.
The Way We Love Here, 2.5/5-Okay no, this was the worst written story. This is one of the ones with fantasy elements but I found it so hard to follow (by which I mean, it didn't make me care enough to get past the clumsy description). Not terrible but a weak link.
Oomph, 5/5-Omg yes. My absolute favourite by a mile. Two girls meet in an airport and aaaaah. I've never read anything by this author but I desperately want to now. This was literally perfect and I won't hear a bad word against it.
The Dictionary of You and Me, 3/5-Eh. The guy in this was so unappealing to me. Basically the girl works in a library and the guy won't return a dictionary so they've been chatting on the phone for four months. It was painfully obvious he was going to turn out to be the cute guy from school and I didn't buy it.
The Unlikely Likelihood of Falling in Love, 5/5-SO GOOD. My second favourite story. A girl who is super into statistics sees a cute guy on a train and then does a project calculating how to see him again. Another couple I would love to read more about and the ending was so satisfying.
259 Million Miles, 2/5-This one is about two people who want to be selected to go to Mars and as part of the selection process, they get put in a room together for 24 hours. Again, I didn't buy the romance and the ending wasn't satisfying at all.
Something Real, 3.5/5-I didn't like the romance in this one but I loved the premise and world-building. Basically there are departments that deal with different kinds of love (Unrequited, Breakups etc) and the main guy goes to try and find out why his last relationship ended. Managed to not be entirely predictable but that wasn't enough on its own.
Okay, so based entirely on maths, this anthology gets 3.5/5. However, I honestly enjoyed it much more than that applies. None of the stories are truly bad and the good ones are so incredibly good that it makes the whole thing worth reading. A nice surprise and a lovely start to the month of love.
Overall Rating:
.5