Loveless Book Review

From Goodreads: It was all sinking in. I’d never had a crush on anyone. No boys, no girls, not a single person I had ever met. What did that mean?
Georgia has never been in love, never kissed anyone, never even had a crush – but as a fanfic-obsessed romantic she’s sure she’ll find her person one day.
As she starts university with her best friends, Pip and Jason, in a whole new town far from home, Georgia’s ready to find romance, and with her outgoing roommate on her side and a place in the Shakespeare Society, her ‘teenage dream’ is in sight.
But when her romance plan wreaks havoc amongst her friends, Georgia ends up in her own comedy of errors, and she starts to question why love seems so easy for other people but not for her. With new terms thrown at her – asexual, aromantic – Georgia is more uncertain about her feelings than ever.
Is she destined to remain loveless? Or has she been looking for the wrong thing all along?

CW: Some internalised aphobia earlier on in the novel, several instances of verbal aphobia (said to minor characters), accidental aphobia due to lack of knowledge about a-spec identities (again, earlier in the novel), brief mentions of past emotionally abusive relationships, and brief references to past bullying.

Hi bookish lovelies,

Last year, my wonderful friend Kelly sent me books for my birthday. She’d picked them off my wishlist, selecting books that she’d really loved and thought I’d appreciate. One of those books was Loveless by Alice Oseman. It’s taken me a few months to get around to picking it up, because I knew it was a contemporary novel that delves into a lot of heavy issues, and I wanted to make sure that I picked it up when I was really ready to take it in.

I was initially not entirely sold on the book. It was strange reading about Georgia going to prom and going to uni for the first time. I don’t really know how to explain it but the whole moving into dorms and going through the first few weeks and struggling to enjoy clubbing and making friends and all that kind of stuff felt a bit like secondhand embarrassment in a way, because it reminds me sooooo much of my own time at university, and that whole uncertainty that surrounds that time. And I just didn’t feel entirely comfortable reliving that. I think the bits that were hardest to read were Rooney’s, if only because I acted like her in a lot of ways, and I totally understood where it came from when she was going through it all. I don’t want to get too much into that, because that would lead to spoilers. But it did feel a little raw and a bit awkward, and not always in a great way.

That being said, I did really start to enjoy the book once Georgia had settled into uni more. I think Oseman does a great job of unravelling some of those myths about university. Georgia holds back from a lot of stuff, she doesn’t like clubbing, and spends a lot of her time reading fanfic in bed in her PJs. But I think that’s awesome, because it reflects other experiences of university, which are no less valid. It was nice to read about a character who was a bit more introverted, and who tried her best to challenge herself without putting herself into situations where she felt too uncomfortable. There are a few times where she breaks this rule, and does some pretty shitty things to her friends, but I think the book did a good job of trying to make the university setting feel realistic, and to give us a glimpse of how uni life is for a (probably pretty big) portion of students.

The LGBTQ society and the Shakespeare society are where things started to get more interesting and layered for me. I loved reading about how many students were beginning to learn more about their identities, because again I think this reflects that sort of liberating feeling you get when you first go to uni (or get a job and live on your own for the first time) and you have the chance to sort of reimagine yourself, and become someone that someone that you want to be, rather than someone that your parents or peers expect you to be. A lot of people come out during this time, because university can be a liberating environment and you’re surrounded by people who are all going through a kind of self-reidentification. Obviously, not everyone goes through such a big understanding about themselves, but I think the novel reflected the reality of uni a lot. I also liked that there was some conflict with this too. As society learns more about LGBTQ+ identities, we begin to acknowledge and give names to identities which have been around for a long time, but we’ve never really understood before. But some people don’t understand this, and I think what was so interesting about the aro-ace rep in the book was that it wasn’t just a quick realisation for the main character and then everything is cool again. She actually learns about aro-ace identities quite early on in Loveless, but it takes her a long time to begin to consider how it might relate to her. And there are people in the book who don’t understand, or who assume it’s a kind of passing feeling, rather than an LGBTQ+ identity. Even as someone who doesn’t identify this way, I felt so disheartened and upset for Georgia and other aro-ace characters in the book who are questioned or challenged about their identities. Oseman does an amazing job of helping you relate to her characters, and allowing you enough of a glimpse into their journeys that you sort of learn along the way. Identities are complex things, and I think a lot of the confusion that people have about asexual and aromantic identities comes from the lack of understanding about what these terms mean, especially when there are a lot of ways in which people can identify as aro and/or ace. And while I can’t speak for people within the aro or ace communities, I personally feel that the book did a good job of trying to educate readers about LGBTQ+ identities without coming across as condescending. It was brilliant at times, it was really sad at times, and I definitely spent a good portion of the book ugly crying into my coffee. And part of that was because I felt that Loveless really made you care for the characters and their friendships and found families and their arcs, including some characters’ growing realisations of where they fit into the world.

Also, expect to ugly cry quite a lot throughout this book. Seriously. All my friends warned me.

Overall, I’m giving Loveless:

I think the novel is very sweet, and I absolutely adored the found family group. Also the ace-aro rep in the book is handled with a lot sensitivity, but I think it still has some very important messages in it, particularly for readers who may find it helpful to see themselves represented in more fiction. The book did a great job of explaining different identities within the LGBTQ+ community, and in particular explaining more about ace-aro identities. I definitely felt like I understood more after reading the book. That being said, there’s a lot of moments where there’s a good deal of secondhand embarrassment and awkwardness, which is probably to be expected since people are at uni for the first time and learning more about themselves and obviously that comes with a good dose of mistake making too, but it did sometimes mean that I needed to put the book down for a few minutes to try and get over those scenes.

Has anyone else read this book or plans to? What do you think about it? Let me know by joining in the discussion in the comments section down below! <3