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Okay, I bought this book when I saw it at Target for a few reasons. One, I've read Heartstopper and have been interested in Loveless for a while, since, two, I'm aroace myself. Three, the cover on this edition is super pretty. After reading, I can say that although this book wasn't quite my style, I will definitely be keeping it for the pretty purple cover.

Loveless is an easy read, and I blew through it in maybe two days. The main character, Georgia, goes on a journey of self-discovery from high school graduation through college. She brings her college roommate into her friend group, blows it up, and then pulls it back together. Alice's works feel like they could really be about modern teens or young adults, and I enjoyed the banter and the group dynamics in Loveless. I could also relate to Georgia, even though our aroace experiences are pretty different, and wanting to see her figure herself out really pulled me through the book.

I did get frustrated with Georgia at times, although I always try to give characters room to be flawed since that's obviously an important part of telling many stories. I think I personally like a little more narrative distance from characters, since it's easy for me to get annoyed by characters I'm too "close" too (see this post for clarification: tinyurl.com/yc3jujvj). I guess I also have a low tolerance for drama since I felt like her friends were really freaking out over nothing sometimes. But I must concede that it is a realistic YA book, so it's natural for the conflict to come from social drama.

A lot of the criticisms I've seen leveled at the book claim that it presents Georgia's story as the "only aroace experience", which I disagree with. In fact, the book gets a little infodumpy in its attempt to validate every aroace experience despite the limitation of having only one main character. You can't expect one person's story, fictional or real, to align perfectly with yours just because they use the same label. Other criticisms, which may have a little more meat to them, concern the novel's other "representative" characters, but at the end of the day I think that the standards for the queer characters in this novel are probably all over the place for different people. Some people will like them, and some people won't.

Overall, the relatability aspect wasn't strong enough to completely enchant me, and it was a little YA for my tastes (I've always had an unfortunate inability to appreciate YA), but I did finish it, which is saying a lot for a lapsed reader! And the cover, as I've said, is very pretty. So although it may fall to a book culling in the future, for now it's got a place on my bookshelf.