Loveless by Alice Oseman

For fans of Love, Simon and I Wish You All the Best, a funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of a girl who realizes that love can be found in many ways that don’t involve sex or romance.

From the marvelous author of Heartstopper comes an exceptional YA novel about discovering that it’s okay if you don’t have sexual or romantic feelings for anyone . . . since there are plenty of other ways to find love and connection.

This is the funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of Georgia, who doesn’t understand why she can’t crush and kiss and make out like her friends do. She’s surrounded by the narrative that dating + sex = love. It’s not until she gets to college that she discovers the A range of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum — coming to understand herself as asexual/aromantic. Disrupting the narrative that she’s been told since birth isn’t easy — there are many mistakes along the way to inviting people into a newly found articulation of an always-known part of your identity. But Georgia’s determined to get her life right, with the help of (and despite the major drama of) her friends. (From Goodreads)

Hey everyone, it’s been a while since I’ve written a fresh book review. I have a backlog of about 10 books I need to review from the last couple of years but I’m going to try and review the books I’ve read the most recently in 2023 first.

I recently got back into a reading kick thanks to joining literally four different book clubs (my desperate attempt to leave my apartment now that I permanently WFH). So I have those books I need or should read on top of regular reading.

On top of that, I’ve been borrowing a lot of books from my roommate lately. So you’ll be seeing more contemporary romance books in the coming reviews. They aren’t usually what I like to read, but I’ve been in the mood for them recently so I’ve been borrowing them from her.

To start out with, this was a book we read for book club a couple months ago (my Young Adult for Adults book club specifically). I was a little bit hesitant going into this book because I typically enjoy reading more fantasy, sci-fi, or historical fiction.

Premise

I really like the idea of exploring other sexualities, especially ones that aren’t typically talked a lot about outside of gay, lesbian, or trans. I feel as if the other sexualities kinda get shoved to the side and unacknowledged.

When we sat down for book club to discuss this book, our group leader actually had a whole presentation about every single possible sexuality and gender identity she could find. It was really interesting as I had no idea there were so many.

But to say all that, I was interested in seeing how a book about a character who is asexual would play out. It seemed like a good concept, especially since so many books are either romance centered or romance adjacent.

Setting

It wasn’t clear to me right off the bat that the characters were from England and that they were going to college in England. I also don’t have any idea how college or university for England works so some of the ways that they talked about college was unfamiliar to me as an American.

A lot of it still made sense to me but I think that maybe I would have connected with it more if I knew more about British college experiences.

Overall the setting was fine and nothing to write home about.

Writing-style

I haven’t read any of Oseman’s books before but my roommate had good things to say about her other books. I really liked the writing style in this book. It was easy to read and it felt really natural.

The way it was written made reading it go by pretty fast and I felt like I was able to read a lot of pages pretty quickly.

It felt almost conversational, which I think was intentional because it’s written in the first person.

Characters/Plot

I’m combining this section because the plot are the characters.

I’m going to be completely honest, I stopped reading this book about half way through and DNF’d it. I really wanted to like it however I just couldn’t get through it.

The characters outside of the protagonist, Georgia were good. I liked Pip, I liked Jason, and I liked Rooney.

I liked that Pip and Rooney had a thing kinda going on most of the time and although Pip’s way of dealing with it wasn’t great, it was realistic. I liked that I have a pretty clear picture of each of the characters in my mind. Pip is tall and hot headed. Jason is kinda introverted but kind. Rooney is an extrovert and wants to succeed.

I thought the side plot about Georgia trying to date Jason but then realizing it was awkward was good. That’s something I could see a lot of people doing and they could relate to.

However, the reason I put down the book is that I absolutely could not stand Georgia. Part of the plot is that she mistreats her friends while trying to discover what her sexuality is. That’s fine as far as a plot goes. It made me kinda uncomfortable at times, but growing pains are needed here for the main character to grow.

Granted this is also a YA novel which aren’t always known to be the most sex positive books to begin with.

But Georgia is so sex repulsed the entire time, I had to put the book down and walk away. I started feeling bad partway through for liking sex. I understand Georgia is supposed to be asexual so she doesn’t feel sexual feelings like other people do, however she was just SO NEGATIVE about sex at all.

I’ve had some truama in my past and it started to bring up some bad memories for me.

On top of that, not everyone who is asexual is sex repulsed and I think it would have been a more interesting experience for a character who is figuring out who she is to be a little more gentler towards her friends in this regard. And like…IDK…have some self-awareness?

Quote: “‘This has to be a fucking joke,’ I blurted. Rooney paused. ‘What?’ I sat up, pushing the covers off my body. ‘Everyone has to be fucking JOKING.’ ‘What d’you–’ ‘People are really out there just … thinking about having sex all the time and they can’t even help it?’ I spluttered. ‘People have dreams about it because they want it that much? How the–I’m losing it. I thought all the movies were exaggerating, but you’re all really out there just craving genitals and embarrassment. This has to be some kind of huge joke.’

I was pretty naive going into college myself, I went to an evangelical Christian high school out in the middle of nowhere. So I was pretty sheltered myself. I hadn’t even done anything sexual. But I was aware that people thought about sex a lot and enjoyed it a lot. This didn’t come as a surprise to me, it wasn’t weird, it just was reality.

So the fact that this college freshman is apparently having a mental breakdown to her roommate (who has also had a lot of sex btw), acting like this is REVOLUTIONARY just really pissed me off.

It felt like this book should have been aimed more towards a younger audience because the main character acted like she was 12 most of the time. Like I was surprised about sex when I was in the middle school. But by the time I graduated HS, I even knew that it was a thing other people enjoyed.

I think part of the reason this particular part pissed me off is because the way Georgia talks about sex feels like she’s judging everyone and shaming them for it.

When I was in HS, we were told that if you did anything below the neck, you were going straight to hell. I felt a lot of shame around sex going into college and even after college. It’s been 10 years since I graduated HS and sometimes I still feel bad about it.

I just really wish that even though Georgia doesn’t understand sex (and might also be aromantic but they don’t really discuss that), I wish she had come off kinder about it.

Anyways, I also thought it was interesting that for a character who reads a lot of fan fiction and is on the internet a lot doesn’t even think about asexuality or even really knows what that is until we’re most of the way through the book.

I get that it’s not as well known as the other identities but for someone who’s best friend is a lesbian, you would think she’s run into other queer people or has seen other queer people online who has talked about this. I don’t know anyone who is asexual in real life (that I know of off the top of my head), but I know what it is and what it stands for.

It’s the 2020s, I think it’s not THAT unheard of.

Overall, if it hadn’t been for that, I think I would have liked the book a lot better and probably would have finished it.

Thanks for reading and if you’ve also read this, I’ve love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments!

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Related Posts

Latest Posts

One thought on “Book Review: Loveless by Alice Oseman”

Leave a comment