DEAR READER

The love triangle. The only topic more likely to spark a disagreement over Thanksgiving dinner is politics.

Whether your first encounter with the love triangle was Olivia/Viola/Orsino in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or Heathcliff/Cathy/Edgar in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, or James Potter/Lily Potter/Severus Snape in Rowling’s Harry Potter series, it’s unlikely you emerged from the experience emotionally unscathed. Perhaps you lost your heart out on the moors of England, or secretly wished the cards fell in Olivia’s favor. Or perhaps you started a petition to end any and all fictional romantic entanglements involving more than two people. Love triangles can be enticingly sexy, deeply divisive, or occasionally hilarious, and the trope isn’t limited to the romance genre. It appears in all kinds of fiction, from space adventures to boarding school dramas.

Young adult fiction is no exception and has become ground zero for love triangles guaranteed to cause arguments, memes, and tears alike. But within YA the trope is criticized for creating unrealistic expectations for readers, for falling into formulaic patterns, and for weakening otherwise strong female protagonists. In the wake of The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, and The Hunger Games, young adult fiction saw an abundance of the classic love triangle—one girl choosing between two boys who in some way represent different versions of the person she wants to become.

But within these pages are sixteen reimaginings of the love triangle. Some toy with the traditional, others depart dramatically, but all are an examination of what this trope has to offer. The triangles that follow challenge and interrogate the classic; they are political and inclusive and representative of every genre. Through the lens of romance, these stories pose questions about self-determination and what it means to embrace the power of choice.

It has been a pleasure and an adventure working with the authors on this collection, and it is an honor to introduce sixteen new faces of the love triangle. I hope that in them, you find something familiar, something new, and something unexpected.