Three Sides of a Heart: Stories About Love Triangles

Three Sides of a Heart reinvents the love triangle with sixteen different stories, in with a wide spectrum of genres, and race, sexualities and genders. We have stories where the person has to choose between two people, or stories where there is no choice made, or stories where all the three people are in love with each other, or stories where one LI is eliminated so that the other two can live happily ever after. The stories are truly diverse and only about a third of them have some form of heteronormative storylines with a twist. For the rest, they involve at least a bisexual protagonist, and/or have gay/sapphic romances included. There is a story where the love interests are the same person, with different persona. There is a story involving a polyam ship among vampires, or a story with a polyam ship involving an empress who was not meant to be a ruler but ends up becoming one. There is a story where one of the love interests is genderfluid, and one where the genders of the three people involved is not specified. Another where one of the love interests is not a person, but a city. Basically, it is all different kinds of stories, with distinct storytelling styles, and diverse material, but the common theme of the love triangle. The book starts off with a sweet love triangle, Riddles in Mathematics where a brother-sister duo both love their childhood friend, and has hints of the Hayley Kiyoko’s song Girls Like Girls (without the abusive bf), and that kinda had me hooked in the book! While I really can’t go into each and every one of the stories, I would like to mention a few. Work in Progress was an unusually written story, with the genders of the trio not specified and the story actually being mini-stories of the same three characters but in different settings like space fantasy, high fantasy, contemporary, etc. and it doesn’t really have a conclusion. Just the idea that their story is told and retold across in different times, making it a timeless story that is much more about deep friendship. It is also one of the (probably) polyam stories. Another story, The Historian, the Garrison and the cantankerous cat woman is distinct because it is from the point of view of one of the love interests in the triangle (which is not a polyam ship) and delivers a nice gut punching twist in the end. I loved that it kept me on my toes and then made me gasp because I really couldn’t have seen that coming, and neither did the one who had to choose between the two. Dread South has me excited to read Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation because I think this short story is set in that universe and this little taste has me wanting for more. A Hundred Thousand Threads challenges the old new exciting girl trope with a blind central character and both his love interests being different personas of the same girl. While most of the stories in the book were amazing, some didn’t exactly impress me. Some were just playing on the old choose between the two love interests – one who excites you, one who interests you. Some were just two people chasing the same person, and that person has to decide to go with their head or their heart. And some stories did not really have a conclusion, or a forward movement to the plot – just present a setting where an unusual love triangle is presented. These were kind of why I could not give this a full five-star rating despite being an amazing collection of stories overall; it, however, will be said that if I were judging on individual stories, most WOULD get a 5-star rating from me, as they were compelling, well-written, and complete stories in such a small size. Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Harper Collins, via Edelweiss.