Let's Talk About Love

I love Alice so much. I love her trying to figure out how to grow up, choose what she wants to do, maintain the friendships and family relationships she cares about, navigate various kinds of attraction and potential romantic relationships and what she wants in that regard. I love how she feels about her job, how she relates to TV shows and movies (and that she writes about them!), that she named her cat Glorificus, that she loves cuteness and food. She's a really well-written character, she feels like she has history(that you mostly don't feel like you're missing because it's integrated well), and I want to give her all the hugs. Feenie feels like few other characters I've read, and I'm so glad Alice has her. I don't know that I was fully satisfied with their relationship arc in the book, but Feenie is a delight and important in so many ways. Ryan is a sweetheart, and I appreciated that Alice has a relationship with him that's not just through Feenie. Moschoula is a very minor character, but every time she appeared was great. We got a lot of Essie at the library early, and I was disappointed when there was a long stretch of the book without her and the library. Alice's family relationships are complicated. I liked where her relationship with her parents goes. Her relationships with Aisha and Adam, her siblings, are more static and not addressed as much. (There's a lot of avoidance, and it doesn't have the ending that the parental relationship does.) I really appreciated that people weren't default white; Kann consistently described skin color. I liked the ways that race came up because it matters in both Alice and Takumi's lives. Despite what I said about history earlier, there are a lot of events within the timeline of the book that happen off-screen. Alice and Takumi do lots of things together, and there's an exercise Alice talks about doing for her counselor that we don't see. This could be fine, but it ends up feeling like a lot, and some of it is important. It also makes it really hard to keep track of time; the book manages to feel both like too much and too little within a single summer. Before I talk about the ace representation, a major warning for ace readers: The first chapter is the breakup scene mentioned in the blurb. It is very real in many ways, and even without having experienced most of those anti-ace reactions myself, it was an incredibly rough read. Please be prepared and take care of yourself. Alice remembers some other anti-ace stuff she dealt with in detail in the next couple of chapters, but after that it's not very present. All of it is called out. (I also want to note that one of the anti-ace statements is calling Alice "the Corpse." Again, it's called out, but that ace/death connection is used pejoratively.) Alice is biromantic asexual. (She thinks about the spectrum through the book but doesn't change IDs. She feels arousal at one point, but she mostly ends up thinking it wasn't sexual attraction.) She specifically refers to herself as queer at one point. She feels aesthetic attraction and romantic attraction, both of which are named. She also loves cuddling, so she feels contact attraction, but that's not named. She likes cuddling, hugging, and kissing. She doesn't want to have sex (and she says repeatedly that she doesn't think about sex), but she's probably closer to indifferent or averse than repulsed. "I don't see the point. I don't need it. I don't think about it." Alice knows she's ace, and she's known since high school, but she's not out to many people. (A note: her health teacher introduced her to the word "asexual." Points to that teacher.) She has something of a community on Tumblr, but it seems pretty casual. She talks about faking a crush in middle school, trying to be in a relationship in high school while trying to figure out romantic vs sexual attraction, and having sex to see if it changed anything/see how she felt about it. A lot of this felt so very real, and I appreciated it a lot. (I identify very much with faking a crush in middle school, with getting bored while kissing, and with not knowing whether someone is flirting or not.) Alice feels something that is somewhere between sexual attraction and stronger aesthetic attraction than she's ever experienced before. It's really confusing for her, and I appreciated that confusion a lot. I know I've said this a couple of times already, but it's so real. My first experience of just that type of ?? attraction was less dramatic than Alice's, but it was really disorienting and confusing for me. Even though Alice continues to identify as "straight up ace" (in Feenie's words) and not gray-ace or another spectrum ID, I think this scene will resonate with a lot of spec folks. This section of the book includes this fantastic line: "Alice had always wondered what physical attraction would feel like, and while she didn't necessarily dislike it, she wished there were a button she could press to turn it back off." (I particularly like this because "physical attraction" is what I called that confusing in-between place and was also what I called what I didn't feel before I had the words about asexuality.) Alice has a really affirming conversation with Feenie around attraction and sex and identity/the spectrum. (Not all of Feenie's ideas in this conversation are good ones, but it was so lovely to read.) When Alice is first dealing with this attraction, there was a statement that felt like it conflated arousal and attraction to me a bit. I couldn't figure out exactly what about it was bothering me, but I was uncomfortable. But later in the book, this exact issue comes up in a conversation between Alice and her counselor,and her counselor explicitly says that the two are distinct. So, I thought the book did a good job calling out the differences among sexual attraction, romantic attraction, aesthetic attraction, arousal, and sex favorability. Alice's jogging and sex comparison is useful in her conversation with Takumi, but when it comes back at the end with the line "Either you enjoy doing it or you don't," I was not... pleased? There are a lot of aces that's not true for. The word "squish" is used on-page! I was really happy to see it. The book does a good job of valuing friendship overall. I would have been happier if aromanticism were acknowledged (especially because "squish" is really influenced by the aromantic community). More about aromanticism later. We got this line from Ryan, which I appreciated for many reasons: "I say this cautiously because it's not the only answer, but maybe try dating someone who's ace, too." It's not the only answer; he's right. But it's a possible answer that so rarely see even acknowledged in ace books. The world is not so full of allos that we don't have any choice but to date them if we want to date. That said, there were several moments in the book that weren't aro-friendly. (It's far from the worst alloro ace book I've read in that regard, but still.) *There's a scene that conflates feeling romantic attraction/being romantically in love, "being very loving," and liking romantic stories. These are very much not equivalent. *The line "Love was intangible. Universal" comes up in a context where it could be general but Alice has been talking about romance, so it still stings a little. *"Love is love" is referenced in a positive way. *There's this, and it's very specific to Alice. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I think it needs some unpacking and would bother some of my other aro friends in a "I'm not more broken than you" way: "The bottom line was her body had never shown so much as a flicker of sexual interest in anyone. But that didn't mean she liked being alone. That didn't mean she wasn't lonely. That didn't mean she didn't want romance and didn't want to fall in love. It didn't mean she couldn't love someone just as fiercely as they loved her." *Takumi is skeptical of the idea of non-romantic soulmates. (Alice is very insistent on the idea, though, which I appreciated.) There's one spot that's inclusive of nonbinary folks, but then at another point "opposite sex" is used. Warning for sexual harassment.

I purchased this book as part of a 30 Days of Pride Book Review project. The following is that review: Alice had her whole summer planned. She was going to watch as much tv as possible with her two best friends, work at the library just enough to kick in her part of the rent, and continue to avoid, by any means necessary, the impending conversation with her parents about how she is Not-now-not-ever declaring a major in pre-law. Everything was pretty much perfect… until it wasn't. The new guy at work, Takumi, just triggered a ridiculous level of insta-attraction that Alice doesn't know what to do with and not just because she has sworn off dating after her recent crushing break-up. The real issue is that Alice is 100 percent certain she's Asexual, and completely confused about what these feelings for Takumi even mean. This book is charming! Alice is an adorable bundle of pop-culture references and navel-gazing. Her love of all things television is endearing and (hey, I'll admit it) relatable. Her narrative voice is just bursting with quirky character. I couldn't help but grin at some of her funny exclamations. The main conflict of this book is a maybe (or then again maybe not) budding romance, for a girl who isn't sure she wants another romance, especially when she doesn't want the same things her partners want and she doesn't know how to explain that to them without feeling like a freak of nature. A lot of the conflict is Alice against Alice, as she tries to wrestle her insecurities into submission, admit what she wants, and then actually believe she deserves it. I appreciated that Alice was complicated and so were her feelings. I will say that, because Asexuality is just not as visible, there was a lot of explaining what it meant. Defining by Alice to others and to herself. Other people telling her what it meant. Other people questioning it and her explaining it. And there are points where you can almost feel the intentionality of it, the author educating us, the reader… but it wasn't as forceful or ham-fisted as these things can be. It always had a narrative purpose. In fact Alice struggles with this exact thing, because Asexuality is so misunderstood she worried, ”would she have to spend the rest of her life coming out over and over and over...? And once she did, would people always expect her to talk about it?” The only petty thing I'm going to bring up… there was, for sure, one typo, and one or two places that may have just been confusingly worded… and that's all the petty nit picking I have. I recommend you read this book. Alice is a quirky and charming leading lady in a very unconventional romance. Even if you have already exhausted everything the romance genre has to offer, you probably haven't heard this story yet. The last part of this review weighs the book on the two scales invented for this project. The first scale is called the Queer Counterculture Visibility scale, which is supposed to rate how much a book shows less visible sides of the community. And this book pretty much breaks it. To quote Alice, “if it were a pressure gauge, the glass would have cracked right down the middle.” Our point of view character is a woman of color who identifies as biromantic and asexual, which gets just a ton of points right off the bat. She addresses so many things in her narrative that need to be addressed in so many more narratives. It's awesome. But it doesn't stop there. We have such a diverse cast of side characters, and see all their unique struggles as well. This book is just like the definition of what I was looking for when I made up this scale. 5 out of 5 stars (And a brief standing ovation) The second scale is called Genre Expectation scale, which measures each book against others from its genre. I think it does pretty well here, also. I see this book basically as a young adult romance novel. But I think the idea of sex-less romance is so hard for some people to actually grasp that a romance story, where the protagonist just doesn't care about sex, is genre-defying territory. And while the writing isn't complex and (like many YA fictions) it is a quick and painless read, it has this quirk factor about it. So with the slight genre defying and the quirk combined I'll rate it: 4 out of 5 stars

The cover! The feels! The #ownvoices! The #representationmatters! The #BlackGirlMagic! My happy dance!!! The glorious fro!!!! The #carefreeblackgirl joy!!! This book should be front and center on every endcap and cash wrap in every single bookstore!!! There should be no excuses for this to not be made into a rom-com starring Keke Palmer and some cute struggling Japanese or Japanese-American actor who deserves a chance to become America's new Bae. Hollywood, make it happen and don't you DARE pull that colorist nonsense you're so fond of. Anyway, Alice is the kind of queer PoC representation we've long needed in not just YA, but in fiction as a whole. She's ACE/bi-romantic/greysexual and she's not here to serve as the sassy Black best friend of a needy White heroine who needs relationship advice (how many times have we seen/read that trope). She's not here to serve as a trauma llama to "explain" why sex as such isn't her raison d'etre. Alice just IS. "Love shouldn't hinge solely on exposing your physical body to another person. Love was intangible. Universal. It was whatever someone wanted it to be and should be respected as such. For Alice, it was staying up late and talking about nothing and everything and anything because you didn't want to sleep--you'd miss them too much." However, Alice has more than just her ACE spectrum to deal with. She's stuck trying to please her loving yet strict and unbending parents (aided and abetted by her older sister and brother), all of whom insist she go to law school despite the fact that her heart isn't in it. Add to that a slow shift in the friendship between rough and tumble lifelong best friend Feenie and her fiancee, Ryan. In short, just another day in the life. And Alice is a huge geek! Yay for Black geek girls!!! One thing I truly appreciated about Let's Talk About Love is the depiction of an upper-middle class Black family who expect their children to excel. This might not be a huge deal to most readers, but when the media at large has gone out of its way to show Black families as dysfunctional, poverty stricken and criminally minded, having images of strong, loving and functional Black families is a breath of fresh air. Especially because many of us actually live such lives, regardless of economic status. So Alice has just broken up with her girlfriend Margot because she didn't understand why Alice just wasn't interested in the physical act of sex. And while Alice herself didn't lack the vocabulary to explain that love and sex were different, that she could still love and desire romance, it was also difficult for her to make such a thing make sense. Granted that our society places such an emphasis upon sex as a huge part of romantic relationships, I understood Alice's fears, though I'm far from ACE. "The bottom line was her body had never shown so much as a flicker of sexual interest in anyone. But that didn't mean she liked being alone. That didn't mean she wasn't lonely. That didn't mean she didn't want romance and didn't want to fall in love. It didn't mean she couldn't love someone just as fiercely as they loved her." Enter Takumi. " He was gorgeous--and that was not a word Alice threw around lightly. Not just "Hi, I'm the new boy next door" gorgeous, but the kind of gorgeous that would make you want to slap your mama. The kind of gorgeous you'd stab your best friend of twenty years in the back, set her house on fire, and drive off into the sunset with her husband for. Have sex in the break room at work even though you know there are security cameras in there gorgeous." The one guy who throws everything that Alice thought she understood and turns it inside out. Alice's "Cutie Code" went haywire and she found herself watching him while she's supposed to be working (Alice works at a library - I knew we were book bae). Apparently, Takumi is just as taken with Alice and enjoys being around her. Their growing friendship obviously complicates things. She's ACE. How does she tell Hottie Mac Sexypants that she's not interested in sex, but that she still likes him? How does she make it make sense to her, and why does she feel she has to constantly explain her existence? Hence her trip to Dr. Burris (I envisioned Tituss Burguss as the doctor - what happens when you binge watch The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). Again, showing Black people as seeking out and utilizing therapy. We don't see that enough and it matters. "Asexuality isn't something that's black or white. There is a multitude of shades of gray in between. Being potentially sexually attracted to one particular person isn't as outlandish as you've convinced yourself it is." While all of this is happening, there were maddening instances of daily ignorance (aka microaggressions) that Alice has to carefully navigate. Such as having to explain her hair and why she doesn't want anyone touching it (I know the pain girlfriend, and my rule of thumb is keep your damn hands off my hair because I'm not your pet). She also dealt with the not-compliment "you're pretty cute for a Black girl." Yes Virginia, some clueless guys think this is flattering. It's NOT. And piggybacked onto that is "I've never been with a Black girl before", to which Alice responds: "Allow me to be the one to burst your bubble: don't think you're going to start here." This scene left me in a rage-fest because Alice's best friends who decided to go upstairs and have a romantic moment, left her alone with a guy who didn't understand personal space or consent. And later, one of my complaints with her was she didn't take Feenie to the mat for having ditched her. In fact, she spent a great deal of the book thinking it was her fault. Where have we heard this before? Anyway, back to Takumi. He babysits his twin nieces, is kind of a health nut cooking genius and somehow manages to get Alice into doing things like paragliding. Unfortunately the closer they become, the more confused and scared Alice becomes. The elephant in the room is her asexuality and she has no idea if it will end what feels right to her. And as much as her best friend Feenie is truly ride or die, there were times I wanted to snatch that girl's ponytail and put some common sense in her. Then again, true best friends can fight one minute then be ready to bury a body the next. That's Alice and Feenie. Of course, the book is chock full of diverse characters who are fully realized. Alice's struggle to understand herself and to find what makes her happy is something we can all relate to, regardless of what the character looks like. Too bad some readers see "Black character" and think "oh it's probably going to have street slang and I can't relate though I just finished a book about a wealthy shape-shifting vampire dominant." I could have had this book finished in a day or two, but I forced myself to read slowly and savor. To tell you how much I loved this book, I'm purchasing the hardcover to sit nicely on my physical PoC on the Covers bookshelves. I love looking at all that wonderful diversity and thinking how far we've come, as well as the journey we still need to take. Why the fight for #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #ownvoices has to continue. Needless to say, there are more books featuring awesome PoC heroines, so this year will be awesome!

I love Alice and her relationship with Takumi. I also like how she express her cutie codes instead of actual sexual attraction. She's an adorable character and I love her building relationship with Takumi. *Spoilers ahead* I do wish they got more development. It was implied they were gonna talk about his issues with his brother which they never do. He does discuss some issues with his ex that they tackle which was interesting but it wasn't bought up again. I wish she and him discussed more about her being asexual. I could NOT stand Feenie. She ditched her best friend at a party for sex and gets pissed when Alice spends more time with her new partner? The hypocrisy is so glaring. Not to mention Alice almost gets sexually assaulted at the party, which she NEVER brings up to Feenie, which I'm sure would have shut her up. I get victims don't often come forward right away but it made no sense. Even if she wasn't I don't see why Feenie got so angry. It would've been interesting to see a friendship end because you realize how toxic they are despite knowing each other for years. Overall the book is an okay read for the cute moments between Alice and Takumi and figuring herself out. Didn't care much for anything else

This book has content warnings for acemisia and sexual harassment. Were you needing an asexual romance? Pick this one! This book is so sweet and fluffy that it will just melt your heart. The romance between Alice and Takumi was adorable, and it progressed at a really nice pace. I truly loved how the book didn’t gloss over the issues Alice has with finding romantic partners as an asexual girl while still allowing her to find a relationship that is fulfilling for her. These two were by no means the perfect couple, but they were a couple who tried and communicated with each other and decided to try to work things out instead of not doing anything. It was sweet and realistic, and mirrors a lot of what I’ve seen in the relationships of ace people I know. While the romance itself was rather fluffy, the book did have its serious moments. There is a scene at a party where Alice is sexually harassed that readers should take note of, and there’s also a lot of stress placed on Alice both by her roommates (her best friend and her partner of several years) who seem to be more and more distant from Alice these days, and her overbearing parents who have chosen a career path for her that she doesn’t like and she doesn’t know how to tell them. The book takes place early in Alice’s college life while she’s still trying to figure out how to live on her own and do things unsupported, and the mixed messages she’s receiving about dependence and independence resonated with me. Also, I really loved seeing positive therapy rep in this book! Alice attends therapy on a regular basis and while she has mixed feelings about it, she does stick with it and continues to try to make it work, and I LOVED this because it’s not something I see a lot in fiction. I’d really love to see more normalization of therapy in books because it really helps with de-stigmatizing it, and we need that. Overall, this was a book that made me very happy to read! I highly recommend this one — it’s important to see books with asexual characters who are allowed a “happily for now” because it’s realistic and reflective of real relationships. We need more people to see this. Final rating: 5 of 5 stars

This story is well done. The main character is fascinating in her thought processes and the people around her are vibrant, for better or worse. I like that this book is about a black queer college student struggling with relationships. Friendship is a major topic in this book, which is also about asexuality and what that looks like when you're trying to navigate a sex-obsessed world. The co-star was a fine character as well. I'm glad he was a person of color. Though, the rest of cast seemed to be white, which was odd. Anyway, we don't know nearly as much about the costar as a person but that's the nature of these types of stories. Their relationship was well done and didn't reply July on tired romance tropes. The writing style was direct and light, but there were several serious moments that balance this story. I'm glad that mental health is also addressed head on in this book. Especially when there is so much stigma about getting help. It really is so much more than a love story (whatever our own prejudices define that as). My only complaint about this book is that the two leads would go on all of these adventures that would be talked about after the fact but never shown. I like all of the issues this book tackles. Relationships of all types were represented here. And the authenticity of the author's black experience was felt too. I see you, coconut oil. Anyway this is a thoughtful book that is easy to read. I wanted to know how everything would turn out for the protagonist. I cared and left satisfied and enlightened.

This book was super sweet. It was fun and real and filled with love. This was exactly what I needed 😊. I think this is the only ebook that I’ve ever actually highlighted in?? It was a really good read. Alice is one of the coolest characters I’ve come across. I love how much of a nerd she is and how into fandom she is! It was so much fun to catch all the fandom references in this book (especially the Sleepy Hollow ones!). Alices love for interior design and the cutie code were so cool. I also really appreciated the cutie code breakdown at the back of the book. I think the only thing I didn’t like about Alice was that her character felt a little more YA-ish than new adult. But I still really liked her! She was a whirlwind of awesome and I feel like we would have some epic fandom discussions. 🥰 I think the only major thing I didn’t like about this book was Feenie’s attitude towards Alice leaving that party. She got down right mean sometimes. And I felt like their argument went on far longer then it should. They didn’t really discuss things a whole lot or really listen to each other about how they felt. I know they apologized but it felt a little...glossed over? I guess. But, than again, if Alice and Feenie hadn’t had that fight we wouldn’t have Takumi and Alice getting together like they did. So...🤷‍♀️. Overall this was a fun, sweet read. I would definitely love to see a little novella set in the future to see where these characters are in life. This book is getting a solid four out of five stars.

This book is simply DELIGHTFUL. First of all, let's talk about this COVER. A beautiful, dark-skinned black girl with an afro. She's SMILING. She's in a dress! Joy radiates from this cover and it's one of my favorites of 2018. I'd pick up the book for the cover alone. Now let's talk about the story. Alice is a biromantic asexual. She's wealthy. She's smart and confused and deeply loving, and she's simply an amazing character. I loved her voice, her thoughts, the way she moved through the world. She falls hard for her co-worker, who is also brown! What??? A possible interracial relationship where one of the partners isn't white? (Don't get me wrong, I LOVE me some BWWM romance, but this was a refreshing and welcome change.) I love seeing a book about a black girl that doesn't involve slavery, basketball, gangs, drugs, and all the other typical Black Pain Narratives. This is not to say those stories are not needed or important. But sometimes, a girl's problems are what to major in. How to please her parents. What to do about the boy she may or may not be crushing hard on. How to deal with her roommates/best friends and their changing dynamics. How to do all of the above and still be true to herself and her happiness. Sometimes, a girl just wants to Be without being a Lesson. It's amazing and wonderful to see a black, queer girl (written by a black author) get to explore the things we've seen in mostly white contemporaries for years and years, and I enjoyed this book so, so, so much. I desperately want more from this author.