what a cute, mushy, adorable collection of meet cutes! There is a huge range of stories in here, bursting with originality and tons of diversity.
Some of the stories were a little cheesy for my taste, but most left me with a smile on my face, and the characters fondly in my thoughts long after I finished the story.
I think this book would make a very cute valentines day gift,
Buy, Borrow or Bin Verdict: Buy
Check out more of my reviews sitelinkhere
Note: I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.
RATING:./
One word: Awww, Nicely done, authors, nicely done, This is the first anthology Ive read ever!
TOP TEN FAVORITE STORIES, . .
THE WAY WE LOVE HEREDhonielle Clayton,./I need to check out one of her books ASAP!!
THE DICTIONARY OF YOU AND ME Jennifer L.
Armentrout/Takes place in a library, do I need to say more
OOMPH Emery Lord,/I love Emery Lords stories,
MILLION MILES Kass Morgan,/Literally squeaked at the last line, So adorable!
SOMETHING REAL Julie Murphy,/Cute, cute, cute!
THE UNLIKELY LIKELIHOOD OF FALLING IN LOVE Jocelyn Davies,/Can this happen to me Please
SOMEWHERE THATS GREEN Meredith Russo,/
CLICK Katharine McGee,/I definitely clicked with this,
HOURGLASS Ibi Zoboi,./This needs to be longer!
PRINT SHOP Nina LaCour,./I should go on Twitter more, . . youll understand once you read it,
The rest are all/reads and I enjoyed them as well, Thank you HMH Teen for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review
Meet Cute is a collection of contemporary stories about cute first encouters turned into romance.
Not all people enjoy instalove but once in a while, you'll want it if you're looking for something fluffy.
The stories were hit or miss to me but my favorites were written by Katharine McGee and Sara Shepard both were new to me authors.
Overall, this is a nice and likable collection,
SIEGE ETIQUETTE Katie Cotugno,/
We're off on a horrible start, I honestly didn't enjoy the story, It's forgettable and not cute, The heroine was annoying and pretentious and the hero was boring, Just meh.
PRINT SHOP Nina LaCour/stars
Definitely better than the first story, A greatly written lesbian story but it fell too short, I didn't feel the spark between the protagonists,
HOURGLASS Ibi Zoboi/stars
Lovely story with strong characters, I like the angsty vibe and the little drama, The first encounter is good but it's not cute, Potentially, it can be a beginning of a slow burn romance, Like the second story, it's cut short,
CLICK Katharine McGee,/
GAAAH! This one is über cute and it's exactly the story I like, I adore the concept matchmaking and the plot was greatly buildup, I really like it's written in dual point of view so I get to know more about the characters.
Alexa and Raden definitely clicked,
THE INTERN Sara Shepard,/stars
Another wonderfully cute story, This one is sweet and touching, Phineas is a thoughtful musician, Love him!
SOMEWHERE THATS GREEN Meredith Russo/
Someone enlighten me on this because the story was messy and confusing.
THE WAY WE LOVE HERE Dhonielle Clayton/
Bizarre and enchanting, The story will give you all sorts of feels, I didn't expect to enjoy it, The characters seeing their future with so many possibilities, What's important is to enjoy the present time,
OOMPH Emery Lord,/
A cutesy lesbian romance, I like the marvel reference here and the girls
are just lovely, I had fun reading their conversations in a short period,
THE DICTIONARY OF YOU AND ME Jennifer L, Armentrout/
Nothing is more adorable when a story is set in a library, Getting to know a guy who hasn't return a dictionary and wondering how he looks like, . . So fluffy!
THE UNLIKELY LIKELIHOOD OF FALLING IN LOVE Jocelyn Davies/
Hmm, . It was okay. I thought it's a ripoff of The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight ,
MILLION MILES Kass Morgan,/stars
The male protagonist was adorable! He was sort of a nerd Haha!
SOMETHING REAL Julie Murphy/
Sorry but this falls meh.
It wasn't cute or whatsoever,
SAY EVERYTHING Huntley Fitzpatrick/stars
It's been a while since I've read Huntley Fitzpatrick's book.
I like the story but the ending just felt flat,
THE DEPARTMENT OF DEAD LOVE Nicola Yoon/stars
I really like the concept of the story.
It's refreshing and original but I wasn't as invested as the other stories, so it turns out love is a real and not fake thing that exists!! who knew I certainly did not!
It might be sort of horribly ironic that I rated almost half these stories a very mixed and very mediocre three.
BUT there were some super great standouts, hm Some that might I dont know warrant buying this entire collection
Okay.
Somewhere Thats Green by Meredith Russo was fantastic and important and so worth the read.
Oomph by Emery Lord is the Cutest thing I have ever read, The Unlikely Likelihood Falling In Love by Jocelyn Davies was sort of shockingly adorable, And The Department of Dead Love by Nicola Yoon was so thoughtful and creative, I never wanted it to end.
If youre looking for some other clever stories, look to Nina LaCours aestheticy Print Shop, Dhonielle Claytons different The Way We Love Here, or Julie Murphys sweet Something Real.
But first, let me be totally honest: I only gave half these stories over three.
Four five, two four, six three, one two, one one, for an average raiting of get this exactly a.
star. So overall a pretty decent anthology I wish a few of the threes had been edited just a bit more, because I think a bunch of them could have been so great! But oh well.
Lets get into the stories!
Also, because Apple hates me, I'll be using this flag to denote lead sapphic characters that is basically the only sort of lgbtq diversity we got in this anthology, aside from literally One sapphic trans girl, which is kind of sad and to denote lead characters of color!! thank you for reading My In Depth Opinions and not allowing me to just yell into the interwebs, without further ado:
Siege Etiquette by Katie Cotugno
Slightly unlikeable narrator who I ended up empathizing with.
Clever reveal halfway through the story that I didnt see coming, Unfortunately, a completely forgettable meetcute involving cheating,
Print Shop by Nina LaCour
This was so soft! Beautiful intro and outro really elevate this story.
Evie and Laurens interactions are brief, but so freaking adorable,
Hourglass by Ibi Zoboi
Darkskinned and largebodied lead character Cherish has a freaking awesome character arc, but the meet cute itself here is basically the last page of the story.
Best friend Stacy is just such an asshole, which is hard to handle when their drama is played off.
And perhaps worst of all, the writing is just not good,
Click by Katharine McGee
Alexa and Raden meet on a date where theyve been perfectly matched.
Maybe more of a/! This was sweet but nothing that actually stood out Also, I think my utter hatred for something this author once wrote has kind of ruined her for me.
Whoops.
The Intern by Sara Shepard
Intern Clara meets pop star Phineas and has a weird and notbuiltup date with him.
Well, okay, first of all, none of the emotional punches the story goes for are actually earned so it just feels random.
Did anyone notice of the first FIVE stories, THREE are about the death of a family member And jesus, this celebrity x intern thing is really so boring now.
Somewhere Thats Green by Meredith Russo
Out trans girl Nia has been awarded a petition to use the correct bathroom.
Closeted Lexie petitions the school to take it back and then realizes shes doing it for her parents, Listen, this wouldve been so easy a concept to fuck up, but this story gets it right, never excusing Lexies actions but also giving her a decent amount of narrative sympathy.
Nia is written fantastically this is actually ownvoices for trans rep! and was such a compelling and awesome character.
Also the ending of this was so fucking iconic!! This was basically perfect and Im reading everything this author ever writes now.
The Way We Love Here by Dhonielle Clayton
Probably the most positive of all my threestar ratings.
Scaredoflove Viola meets cute guy Sebastian on an island where everyone has soulmate bands, Violas character totally made this story for me shes such a compelling protagonist, And Im always a slut for good fate stories, Biggest problem: I love the Twelfth Night reference, but why did it have to be the two siblings from that play Why would you do this Dhonielle Clayton I need an answer
Oomph by Emery Lord
Peggy Carter and Natasha Romanoff meet in an airport and flirt their way through a flight delay.
This is literally the purest thing Ive read in my fucking life Hilarious banter compelling characters happy me, I literally want to read a full novel about these two girls, Theyre SO CUTE. AND PERFECT. This feels like a Hayley Kiyoko song,
The Dictionary of You and Me by Jennifer L, Armentrout
Library volunteer Moss tries to get a boy to return an overdue dictionary, I thought this was sort of sweet, but I really cannot deny that it the banter is truly badly written.
Good flirting is really hard to write, but heres a tip dont mention your characters laughing at things that are not really that funny.
ITS FUNNIER WHEN THEY DONT LAUGH, I actually think this mightve been higher if not for how fantastic Oomphs banter was, but my standards were moved too high Yikes
The Unlikely Likelihood Falling In Love by Jocelyn Davies
Logic girl Sam tries to calculate the possibility of seeing a boy on the passing train again.
IM GOING TO SCREAM AT HOW CUTE THIS WAS, None of you can ever understand how fucking cute And sweet And Good This was And it was so wellwritten! The author really knows how to drop in humor and leave it there rather than trying to force laughs.
Million Miles by Kass Morgan
Oh wow, I was sort of expecting this to be shit This follows Philip and Blythe, a boy and a girl stuck in a locked room forhours to evaluate personality.
Okay, this story works because thethe concept is great,the stakes are really high, andthe dialogue is actually sort of decent.
The lead female character is a total manic pixie dream girl, because we only have two male protagonists in this whole damn book, so at least one of the female romantic interests has to lack personality! But I weirdly got vaguely invested in the couple, which wow And yes, it was a little bittersweet, but I actually ended up liking how this story ended.
Something Real by Julie Murphy
I LOVE LOVE, This has basically the best concept ever, in which two girls competing for a dating show end up falling in love, and I totally wish it had been a fulllength novel.
I would readmore pages of June and Martha going on dates, And I laughed out loud multiple times,
Say Everything by Huntley Fitzpatrick
A guy asks a girl out at a diner while she is working as a waitress for his table.
What an asshole, right There is so much that is terrible about this story, The meetcute is so woefully unromantic, The dialogue is so embarrassingly generic, The portrayal of sudden poverty is so completely tropey and overblown and just no, The second person is awkward, And our big, fucking romantic hero reads as pretty creepy,
The Department of Dead Love by Nicola Yoon
This story made me feel like the most fakedeep person in the whole world.
But in a good way A recent breakup victim tries to go through love departments to do over his relationship.
. . until he meets a girl working at one of the departments, The worldbuilding of this one is definitely the focus, but honestly, I am occasionally a sucker for brilliant concept work.
I really wish this could be a full book, and this story also contains my favorite quote from the anthology:
“Some people you want to get to know and some people you want to know you.
I think that's the difference, ”
Yeah. In case you didn't notice, I really liked this collection,
sitelinkBlog sitelinkGoodreads sitelinkTwitter sitelinkYoutube,