Review: Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann

Title: Let's Talk About Love
Author: Claire Kann
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Release date: January 23rd 2018
Pages: 304
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Source: Purchased
Add to Goodreads | Puchase from Bookshop

Alice had her whole summer planned. Nonstop all-you-can-eat buffets while marathoning her favorite TV shows (best friends totally included) with the smallest dash of adulting--working at the library to pay her share of the rent. The only thing missing from her perfect plan? Her girlfriend (who ended things when Alice confessed she's asexual). Alice is done with dating--no thank you, do not pass go, stick a fork in her, done. But then Alice meets Takumi and she can't stop thinking about him or the rom com-grade romance feels she did not ask for (uncertainty, butterflies, and swoons, oh my!). When her blissful summer takes an unexpected turn and Takumi becomes her knight with a shiny library-employee badge (close enough), Alice has to decide if she's willing to risk their friendship for a love that might not be reciprocated--or understood.  

This is such an important book! I don't know many YA books (or any books) about asexual teens, and definitely none about a Black biromantic asexual girl, so the sheer existence of this novel is great to see. When you add a unique and entertaining writing style and a lovable main character into the mix, you end up with an equally fun and important novel.

I loved Alice's character and the writing style of this novel, which are hard to separate because, even though the novel is written in third-person, the writing is very much shaped by Alice's personality. I would love to be Alice's friend; even though she makes her fair share of mistakes, she is one of the most endearing characters I've read about in a while. Her strong personality, penchant for all things cute and romantic, and pop culture-influenced way of speaking closely shape the writing, which is very informal, using internet-speak (for lack of a better term?) and tons of parentheses for additional commentary. I could see how this writing style would get on some people's nerves, but I loved it!

I loved the secondary storylines of this novel, primarily the exploration of Alice's relationship with her friends and her parents. Both her friends and her parents were infuriating at times, but their relationships were definitely realistic. I especially liked the exploration of Alice's jealousy of the relationship between Feenie and Ryan, her two best friends who are engaged to each other--even though Feenie pissed me off throughout the novel, to be honest. Why was she mad at Alice for leaving a party after she went upstairs to go have sex with Ryan (honestly, do you really need to have sex with your fiancé, whom you live with, in someone else's bedroom while you are at a party with both him and your best friend??), especially when Alice was cornered by a scary abrasive guy at this party after her friends left her? I was not the biggest fan of the way Feenie was not held accountable for this and the way the novel made it seem like both Feenie and Alice made mistakes, because yes, but.... I was 100% team Alice. But regardless, the exploration of these conflicts was realistic and well done.

Since I'm not asexual, I cannot judge the accuracy of the portrayal of asexuality, but I will say that I learned a lot about asexuality by reading this novel, and I think someone who doesn't know a lot about asexuality would really benefit from Alice's explanations of her sexuality. I was especially interested in the way Alice navigated her relationships with partners who are not asexual, and I'm not sure what to make of the novel's take on this. In the beginning, Alice's ex-girlfriend Margot breaks up with Alice because Alice does not want to have sex with her and Margot wants to be with someone who actively desires her. In the process, Margot does say some ignorant things about it being unnatural not to desire sex, which is of course aphobic, but asides from these statements, I don't know how to feel about the novel's vilification of her character. I do think that sexual incompatibility is a legitimate issue and that wanting to be with someone you are sexually compatible with makes sense. Even though I of course understand that Alice shouldn't need to have sex just to please her partner, I also don't know if you can expect an allosexual person to give up sex in order to date someone asexual, especially if feeling sexually desired by their partner is important to them. To me, this seemed like a legitimate reason for Alice and Margot to not be compatible and to break up, so I was a little taken aback by the novel's vilification of Margot's decision as a refusal to accept Alice as she is. Is this just my allosexual bias/privilege talking? This seems like a complicated issue with no easy answers to me.

I also had mixed feelings about Alice's and Takumi's relationship. On the one hand, I thought they were super cute together, and I loved the exploration of romance as separate from sex. On the other hand, their relationship moves really fast, and did seem a little insta-love-y to me--or maybe not insta-love, but insta-we are best friends together 24/7 now, since they do take a while to actually get together. And, honestly, if it hadn't been for the way this works in conjunction with the exploration of asexuality, this level of romance would have been a little too much to handle. In some ways, though, it felt like the novel was self-aware in this sense, since Feenie calls Alice out on abandoning her friends and spending every day with Takumi as soon as they meet, so maybe this was an intentional exploration of Alice's character. Regardless, I did like the romance; it's very sweet, even if it moves very quickly. I do wish, though, that the ending had been less rushed--especially since Takumi's handling of Alice's asexuality is contrasted to Margot's, I would have liked to see how they handle this as their relationship progresses. Takumi (who is allosexual) saying he's okay with sex not being a part of your relationship seems easy enough at first, but harder to actually deal with in a long-term relationship, so especially because a nuanced exploration of this seemed to be missing from the beginning of the novel, I would have liked to see this discussed in more detail at the end. 

Regardless of these smaller issues, this novel definitely sparks a lot of interesting conversations about asexuality (not to mention its discussion of race, feminism, and biromanticism). Alice is a lovable character, and Kann's writing style and voice are very entertaining. I'm definitely going to check out Kann's newer novel soon!