Review: Loveless by Alice Oseman

Goodreads

“All of this was for love, in one way or another.”

Release Date: July 9th, 2020

Genre(s): Young Adult, Contemporary, LGBT

Publisher: HarperCollins Childrens

Pages: 435

Rating:⭐️⭐️.5

Synopsis

Loveless is a YA contemporary novel that primarily follows Georgia and her friends as they start college together. Georgia considers herself a romantic, but she’s never had crushes on anyone. With the start of a new life, she embarks on a journey for love, but her plans end up in disaster for her and her friends. And with new terms – aromantic and asexual – being discovered by her and those around her, what Georgia once thought was true is changing. And over time, Georgia and her friends begin to learn about all of the ways that love can be defined.

Review

When I first heard about Loveless, I knew I had to read it, despite the fact that it hasn’t yet been published in the United States (or at least at the time of this review). While I knew my experiences sounded a little different from Georgia’s judging by the synopsis, I knew I had the opportunity to feel so seen by this book, given that I discovered my identity in college as well. I’m happy to see how many others felt seen when they read this. I also hope that this book opens the door to more books regarding the ace spectrum and that it helps with visibility. But I know that there’s some issues that other OV reviewers took with this book, and while reading Loveless, I encountered similar issues. 

Asexuality is a spectrum; not everyone’s experiences are the same. I think that it’s important to mention this, as well as the fact that the desire for romantic feelings (or a lack thereof), as well as your feelings regarding participation in sexual activity, does not make you any more or less asexual. This is something that’s touched upon in this book, and I’m glad to see that it was since this is usually one of the first things that I am personally asked about.  However, I think that the exploration of this could have been better. For instance, there are three characters in this novel that fall on the asexual spectrum. I liked having three ace characters as it shows readers identifying or questioning that there’s so many of us out there and that we’re not alone. However, this could have been an excellent opportunity to show nuance and how people’s experiences with being asexual can vary quite a bit. Instead, we were told in what felt like reading directly through an article.

Additionally, the way that these characters exist solely for Georgia’s self-discovery felt off to me. Especially Sunil, a person of color whose main purpose in the story was to educate Georgia. Then there’s her cousin Ellis, whose character is only present for a small portion of the book. As a whole, many of these characters did not feel developed past their sexual orientation. We’re more than our sexual orientation, and while I see some aspects of other types of character development, I feel like it needed to be more than favorite movies or other pop culture references. Much of this book and the way it was written made for a nice, light read, but I also think part of that had to do with lack of development overall. Even the basics of college, such as class and homework, get briefly touched upon in this book. Obviously Loveless is all about questioning and discovery, but the characters and story still should have been fleshed out beyond that. 

In addition to the representation above, I found myself questioning the way that other sexual orientations were represented in Loveless. There are some stereotypes going on here that I found would be harmful to those identities. For example, a pansexual character admits that she has lots of sex just to “fill a hole.” This combined with some of the lack of character development just adds to the fact that some of the representation here can be harmful.

But the most concerning and discomforting part of this book for me was Georgia herself. Georgia is sex-repulsed and is learning more about this throughout the book. But the problem that I had is how much she would dismiss and put down people that did choose to be sexually active. When you’re questioning, the realization that you’re not having a similar experience to so many people can cause a ton of overwhelm, to say the least. But the way that Georgia repeatedly feels the need to make comments about other people’s choices just felt a bit uncomfortable to me.  If you’re a sex-indifferent or sex-positive ace, this book might feel strange to read at times. I think it’s important to understand the thoughts and feelings that sex-repulsed aces (or people in general) have, as well as, of course, having representation in media. But learning about your identity and what your preferences are shouldn’t lead to so much negativity towards other people’s identities and preferences. I was also bothered when Georgia said that she would rather be a lesbian to Pip, and nothing further is said about that. Georgia wonders for a moment if it was the wrong thing to say, but there was no further conversation why statements like that are harmful.

Between comments like these and Georgia’s feelings towards other’s choices, I couldn’t help feeling like different identities were being pitted against each other. This is contradictory to the final message of the book so I want to believe this wasn’t the intent, but it did create that impact while reading it. There were great opportunities to discuss similar experiences throughout the LGBT community that didn’t happen. I was surprised to see less discussion between Pip and Georgia over compulsive heterosexuality, for example. This is something that the two could have explored and discussed together. Instead, this book almost portrays fake crushes as a mainly ace thing – and it’s not. There were opportunities for so many discussions in Loveless that I really wish we got to see.

I also found Georgia to be someone that was just hard to root for in general. Loveless literally starts with a guy falling into a fire, and all Georgia can say is “I don’t like you that much, sorry” and thinking “Now my favorite jacket is ruined!” It’s hard to feel for someone if that’s the insight we get into a character from the start.

Georgia’s behavior is terrible throughout this book and it constantly goes unchecked by everyone around her. It’s crazy how much I went into this book wanting to love her over a shared identity, and ending this book not really caring about her because of some of the things that she should have known was cruel to do, questioning or not.

The most important part of Loveless for me was the realization of all of the characters, not just Georgia, that love presents itself in so many ways. One of the most important things I learned while discovering my identity was this concept exactly. Through experience, I learned how many different types of attraction there are, as well as how love manifests itself in ways that aren’t always romantic. I was happy to see the allo characters in this book adopting this message though because I also find it common for people to not see love in this way. So this was something in particular that I was happy to see. But, again, with the way Georgia repeatedly puts herself before her friends, this does take away from that a little. 

Despite all this, I had a really hard time determining a final rating for Loveless. While I love the messages surrounding love in this book, and absolutely love how many people felt seen by this book, there were several elements of it that threw me for a loop. As someone that’s also ace, there were so many times where I just couldn’t relate to Georgia because of how much she dismissed other people’s choices (many of which being ones that I make myself). There’s a difference between knowing/learning something’s not for you and being judgmental of what others do because it’s not for you.

I’m also having a hard time wondering whether I should recommend Loveless. At the end of the day, I think that this book was very personal to the author’s experiences. And it’s important to have stories like these, so readers who have similar experiences can feel seen, and readers who don’t can begin to learn about what those experiences are like and how to be more supportive. But given the issues listed above, I do wish there were sensitivity readers involved so these things would have been addressed before publication.

I can continue typing about this book all day, so I’ll leave it at this: Loveless does show a lot about questioning and identifying as an asexual. There were quite a few situations involving comphet where, as it happened in a book, I was able to recall that experience for myself, and being able to share that was so incredibly comforting. But there were also times where Georgia was critical of people’s decisions that I personally partake in, and that’s where reading this as an ace person began to feel really strange. That coupled with the other representation issues and the way this book does more telling than showing makes me less likely to recommend it. But then you also have so many aces out there that were so happy to read about someone who had the same experiences. So if you do decide to read Loveless, I would definitely keep these things in mind.