Serendipity edited by Marissa Meyer

e-Audio, 07:57:34
Narrated by: Aida Reluzco, Alaska Jackson, Ewan Chung, Gary Tiedemann, James Fouhey, Jeanette Illidge, Natalie Naudus , and Reena Dutt 
Release Date: January 4, 2022
Published by: Macmillan Audio
Read from: January 5-7, 2022
Anthology
Source: Library’s Libby 
TW: 
For Readers Interested In: Romance, Contemporary, Romance Tropes, Anthologies, YA

     Love is in the air in this is a collection of stories inspired by romantic tropes and edited by #1 New York Times-bestselling author Marissa Meyer.

The secret admirer.
The fake relationship.
The matchmaker.

     From stories of first love, unrequited love, love that surprises, love that’s been there all along, ten of the brightest and award-winning authors writing YA have taken on some of your favorite romantic tropes, embracing them and turning them on their heads. Readers will swoon for this collection of stories that celebrate love at its most humorous, inclusive, heart-expanding, and serendipitous.

     Contributors include Elise Bryant, Elizabeth Eulberg, Leah Johnson, Anna-Marie McLemore, Marissa Meyer, Sandhya Menon, Julie Murphy, Caleb Roehrig, Sarah Winifred Searle, and Abigail Hing Wen.

*MY THOUGHTS*

Anthologies are always hard to review. And yet, I always read them and review them. But there was no way I could miss this one… with romance tropes and Marissa Meyer? Yeah, I had to have it.

So I thought with this one I would love my favorite romance tropes. but that wasn’t necessarily true. I LOVED the secret admirer story, even though it’s not something I usually enjoy. The comic was a large part of why I liked it also. The art was great, but it was a little wordy for a comic. But it was still really good. The others I liked were not only my favorite tropes, but they were also some of my favorite authors; Julie Murphy’s Fake Dating, Leah Johnson’s Stranded Together, Caleb Roehrig’s Best Friend Love Epiphany, Marissa Meyer’s One Bed, and Elise Bryant’s Grand Romantic Gesture. This was the reason I had to buy this. Yes this was an author name grab, but I knew it would be something that I love because of the topic.

On the flip side of that, there were some that I didn’t care for. Like the Idiom Algorithm, that was about Class Warfare. It’s one trope that I hate, but only because that shouldn’t be something that gets in the way of people falling in love. But what I most didn’t like about this was the way it ended. In an anthology about romance, there shouldn’t be a non-happy ending. I also wasn’t a huge fan of The Makeover trope story as I’m not a fan of that trope either. But even though I didn’t care for the story, it wasn’t all bad. (Besides the ending of that one story lol)

Since I listened to this as an audiobook, I guess I should talk about the narrators. They all performed so well. And since it was a full cast it was pretty cool because they were able to give them own voices narrators. I’m also just a fan of full cast audios, so I was already super happy to listen to them. And lastly, it’s also worth it to note that if you read the audio book, you will be missing the comic by Sarah Winifred Searle. I’m pretty sure they didn’t want any of the art to be lost. Which makes sense, because it really was good and it deserved to not be missed.

I thought this book would be a surefire win for me and it was! There were some that I liked and some that I didn’t so much like. So to come up with my rating, I took into account what I thought about all the stories. I rated them all and then averaged them together. I feel this is the most fair thing to do when there’s a lot of different things that have to come together for one result. And it’s oddly close to something I would give a Meyer book anyway lol

Overall, I give this

Take Me Away

Diverse Book Blogger. Diverse YA Librarian. Wonder Woman enthusiast. Bookish Blerd. "GryffinClaw" Geek extraordinaire. Pitbull mom. She/her linktr.ee/take_me_awayyy