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, Georgia is 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?
By Iris
I already knew and loved Alice Oseman’s graphic novel series Heartstopper, but I’d never read any of Oseman’s novels before I picked up Loveless.
This book has got so much going for it: it features lots of queer characters, lots of references to both Shakespeare and pop culture and a resilient houseplant named Roderick. As my fellow aces will know, stories about people like us (especially as main characters!) are few and far between, so I was a little nervous: what if I didn’t like the way the author handled it?
Good news: I adored this book! First of all, campus novels always give me a very peculiar sense of something I guess I’d call nostalgia, even though living in a dorm or campus is relatively uncommon in the Netherlands, and I certainly didn’t.
Second, the emphasis on the importance of friendship and platonic relationships made me incredibly
happy. As someone with one of the best friend squads in the world (sorry, those are the facts), I felt very seen.
Third, Alice Oseman has this wonderful way of writing stories with a diverse cast of characters without becoming preachy or rubbing your nose in it—almost as if queer folx are actually all around us, just going about their (our) lives.
And finally, the asexuality. My own journey was different from Georgia’s in many ways, but at the same time so much of her struggle is familiar. The internalized heteronormativity is very real, but there’s so much power in taking another step on the road to knowing yourself.
In short, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in any of the above, plus some hilarious Scooby Doo shenanigans, a bouncy castle sword fight and queer theater nerds.
