JUST FINISHED: Loveless by Alice Oseman.
Georgia loves fanfiction and Shakespeare, and dreams of the perfect romance, but she’s never been in a relationship; never kissed anyone; never even had a crush, and at 18, she’s beginning to think that that might be something to worry about. So she’s hatched a plan to re-invent herself at university – no matter what might stand in her way.
What I was most looking forward to in this book was an epic, platonic love story, which I know that Oseman can pull off (she’s done it before in both Radio Silence and I Was Born for This), but weirdly (since Loveless is about how friendship can be just as important as romance), I found myself less convinced by Georgia’s friendships than I had hoped; she claims that Pip and Jason are the most important people in her life, but her actions really, really don’t back that up… More convincing was her relationship with Rooney – her outgoing, sex-positive roommate – which builds up slowly throughout the novel and is full of misunderstandings, but turns out incredibly heartwarming.
Also, for a book that’s supposed to be all about asexuality, Georgia thinks about sex all the time. And I get that she’s figuring herself out, but it comes across as very one-note.
Character-wise, Rooney – though she definitely has her flaws – is my favourite of the ones I’ve already mentioned. I wanted to love Georgia, but found her much less relatable than I’d expected, and likewise with Pip, who was sometimes fun, but frequently frustrating. Jason I liked reasonably well, but he was a little bland. The only other character that I really loved in this was Sunil, even though he really doesn’t get the development he deserves (he explicitly states that he’s not a “queer angel sent to fix everyone’s problems”… but that’s still kind of his entire role in the book), and I thought that the speed and intensity of his friendship with Georgia – when considering his general popularity and her antisocial-fresher status – was very unbelievable, no matter how nice he is. But in any case! I liked him a lot, and I hope he pops up again in more of Oseman’s novels.
And in terms of the plot… there kind of isn’t one? I (eventually) enjoyed the scenes with the Shakespeare Society, but up until the very end it all seemed very secondary to the continuous stream of teachable moments that make up the rest of the book… I wish that, if it was going to make up the climax of the novel, the play could have been more important throughout. And I also wish that among those teachable moments there’d been some mention of sex repulsion, which Georgia seems to feel but is never really brought up – and is absolutely not a universal experience for ace people.
Anyway, for anyone who wants more, my personal favourite books with ace-spectrum rep. are Radio Silence, and Quicksilver by R.J. Anderson (though you’ll need to make it past the much-less-great Ultraviolet in order to get to that one), both of which I’d recommend over Loveless, though neither of them talk about asexuality in such detail.
CURRENT READATHON STATUS: Ready to read Deerskin, the final book on my TBR, as if my life depends on it! Only one and a half days left to go! 😱 Loveless was for the prompt to read a young adult book.
Books Completed: 8
Pages Read: 2636
Hours Listened: 14:41
Challenges Completed: 8
Nightjar's Jar of Books 