book review: loveless, by alice oseman

The fourth novel from the phenomenally talented Alice Oseman – one of the most authentic and talked-about voices in contemporary YA.

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?

Loveless was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and I already expected to relate a lot to Georgia in her journey of embracing her identity as an aro-ace girl. Alice Oseman so far has been an author of hit and misses for me, so I didn’t know what to expect exactly from this one.

While I didn’t love every aspect of this book, I still really enjoyed it, for the reasons I’ll explain now:

1. Georgia was very relatable. Like I said, I already expected to relate to Georgia and, in this case, relatability was important because it made me feel seen. Even though Georgia is not interested in experiencing romantic love for herself, she still loves watching rom-coms and reading fanfiction, which makes it even harder for her not to romanticize and dream of a happily ever after situation for herself. She’s also a major introvert and struggles with making conversation and meeting new people, so really, we had *a lot* in common.
2. Positive queer community. It made me very happy to see that the Pride Soc here (a queer club they have at the university) was striving to be an inclusive and safe space for all queer identities. Even though it is shown that not *everyone* is on board with that, the representation was overwhelmingly positive, which was lovely to see. We know that, in reality, sadly, asexual people aren’t super welcomed in queer spaces, much like non-binary folks or even queer POC folks, but it meant a lot that the author made sure to highlight how Georgia was welcome there.
3. Platonic relationships!!!!@!#! This is probably my favorite thing about this book, but wow, it was beautiful. Even though we don’t have Georgia falling in love romantically with anyone, it doesn’t mean we don’t follow a love story. It meant so much how platonic relationships here are not represented as just something “devoided” of romance, like as if they are defined just because there is no kissing or sex involved. That’s not the meaning of platonic relationships at all and they can be just as beautiful, intense and powerful as any romance, and I loved that so much.
4. Theatre kids! I have a weakness for theatre kids, because I’ve always lowkey wanted to be one (thanks to High Schoool Musical), but never really was. For that reason, I love reading books about all the theatre shenenigans: rehearsals, memorizing lines, directing the scenes, etc. It was super fun reading about it in this one, especially because it had to do with Shakespeare, which I’m actually familiarized with, unlike other works.

1. Pip. Initially, I was very excited about Pip’s character, as she was a lesbian half-Colombian girl and South American rep always makes me happy. But I really disliked Pip throughout this book. Not only because a lot of her bad advice to Georgia was coming from her own insecurities, (something Rooney also does at the course of this novel and bothered me *so* much. Can we stop people from giving advice that they haven’t even internalized themselves first?) but also because she spends a lot of this book holding grudges and being mean when she was just as much on the wrong. She did not feel like a good friend to me, at all, and bothered me so much.
2. Playing with someone else’s feelings in order to figure out your own. I don’t know why this bothered me so much, since it is clear from the premise that this is the direction the book is going to go. But it will forever be one of my least-favorite tropes in fiction, so yeah.
3. At times, Georgia did not feel like a main character. I think this may all just boil down to the fact that most Alice Oseman books are in first person, and so we have to follow the side characters through Georgia’s eyes. But I feel like after the 55% mark, we were *mostly* following the side characters. While that wouldn’t bother me necessarily in order circumstances (it didn’t bother me in Radio Silence to follow a lot of Aled’s life, even though Frances’ was our main), I feel like with Georgia being asexual, it did bother me. As someone who relates to her, I felt like I’d never be the protagonist of my own life because I do not experience romantic feelings like everyone else does. This tone is not the entire tone of the book – like I mentioned, it was just at times that I felt like we focused more on everyone else than on Georgia, but it bothered me, so it was worth-mentioning.

Overall, I’d still recommend this book. Especially for other aro-ace folks, this book can be so, so very meaningful and I really hope by talking about my not-so-favorite things, I haven’t discouraged anyone or dismissed someone’s feelings because I do understand how important it is to feel seen. On that note, I want to recommend Margaret’s review, as I feel like she was able to open up a lot more about how important this book can be for aro-ace folks.

Even if you do not identify with Georgia in any way, this book still has great queer rep overall and one that deserves more support and rep, so considering this one is own-voices, y’all should definitely be reading it.

If you read Loveless, what are your thoughts? Lets’ chat in the comments!