Let's Talk About Love

TW: aphobia, sexual pressuring, racism
2.5

When her girlfriend breaks up with her over being asexual, Alice is determined to steer clear of the dating game. Anyway, she's got 2 long-term best friends turned roommates and a job she likes, so even the pain of a break up and the occasional headache that is her boundary-less family it should be easy to stick to the plan and still have a great summer. That is, before new hire at her job and certified "cutest man she's ever met" Takumi shows up and complicates things. Now Alice's friends are mad at her, she's not sure how to handle her identity, and nothing seems easy anymore.

All I knew about this book was that it was supposedly a romance starring an asexual poc, so I came here completely for the rep. However, this book wasn't for me the way I'd been hoping.

I'm glad for a story about an asexual alloromantic person navigating the waters, and for the messiness of questioning your identity or not knowing how to explain your experience from the bottom up. I'm sure a lot of people saw themselves in Alice, even though I did not. There are many ways to be ace, and tackling the confusion and borderline self-punishment will probably make this novel ring true for a good number of ace people.

However, for me, I was let down by Alice as asexual rep. As I said, I do think some people can identify with her strongly, but I'm at the point where I'm sick of a lot of the things this book does. Such as the shame in being ace, which I understand addressing, but I personally would rather not have to rehash whenever we get one of our rare representations. And then there's the strange amount of sexual conversation and sexual details, which feels like it's added in to make it more "mature", and feels too close to random sexual content to prove something for me. And, finally, Alice is very much personified as a more cute, childish character personality-wise, which is a giant stereotype for aces. I get that some of this can be squarely because of my own biases, but it's why it didn't work for me personally.

The other thing that super didn't work for me was that I disliked the entire supporting cast. A large portion of this book is about Alice finding herself in a fight with her best friend(s), and by the end we're supposed to believe they were both equally wrong and they should go back to the way things were. Now, I am very sensitive when it comes to manipulative, self-centered, "refuse to change or do better" friends who want you to only care about their own well being, so I am possibly overblowing this, but the constant scenes of Feenie verbally attacking Alice for having another person in her life, blaming Alice for wanting to have a life outside of their apartment, and then trying to punish her for not immediately groveling and apologizing for all that makes me furious. As does the fact that Feenie gets to end this narrative off without ever having to change, and in fact still maintaining that Alice was "being a bitch". And her boyfriend isn't as bad but he's a push over and should do better.

As for Takumi... Well, first off this is barely a romance. It's heavily buried under the friend drama and family drama, and even then it doesn't feel like more than a subplot to pass the time. But Takumi himself is really irritating and has no reason to be interested in Alice, and, better yet, Alice has no reason to be interested in him. Not only is he the classic hipster-y guy trope without much else to him, he's just as judgmental as the rest of the people in Alice's life! It's just that instead of trying to control her future like her family, or the people she spends time with like Feenie, he is constantly trying to control what she eats. Not as bad in comparison, but still- in this context, he's just one more person telling her what to do and acting like he's the authority she should be listening to!

I was expecting a feel good, fluffy asexual story with a cute romance, and it is not at all what I got. I'm still glad that book with the representation in them that this one has can be published and loved, but the actual execution did not work for me at all.

With the caveat that books where a relationship is the main plot stress me out... I really like this one. It didn't linger too long on the bad stuff, whenever things were rough emotionally in one part of the MC's life she always had at least one other place to turn for support (though sometimes more than one thing was rocky at once). Her relationship with her best friends (who are engaged to each other) is nuanced and dynamic, she has a different rapport with them as individuals and as a couple. It also deals with her family relationships, with her much older siblings and her parents who have very strong opinions about what she should do with her life. The main romantic interest in the story gets space for the reader to get to know him pretty well as the MC is trying to figure out what she wants as a biromantic asexual person who isn't out to many people and has a lot of anxiety about talking about her asexuality. This book has nuanced discussions of labels which stay centered on the MC throughout, focused on her experience without trying to overgeneralize for other people who might share her labels. The MC and the love interest also have some discussions about their very different experiences as POC (Black and Japanese, respectively). Overall it's a mostly upbeat story that's not afraid to be sad when it's needed, and is a firm proponent of the restorative powers of great food and a good cry. The layers of important relationships in the MC's life helped to showcase different parts of her inner life as well as showing what she cares about with each person.