Review also posted to my blog.


3.5


SapphicAThon: a book where the main character is a person of colour, a book with a cover you love
Feminist Lit February: an #ownvoices book about an experience other than your own, a book by a female/non-binary/genderfluid black author


content warnings: aphobia, racism, microaggressions, mentions of violence
representation: black biromantic/asexual protagonist, japanese main character, filipino main character, side characters of colour, sapphic side character


“Through it all, being demeaned and feeling disheartened and dispirited, Alice was expected to be nice. To overlook the microaggressions when they continuously rained down on her and find solidarity wherever she could. She was expected to endure in silence.”


Before I even get into my thoughts on the book, please just look at the cover. Look at it for a very long time because it is maybe my favourite cover ever made.

Now, onto what you actually came here for. This book follows Alice, a college student who at the start of the novel is broken up with because she never wanted to have sex with her girlfriend. Alice knows that she’s asexual but has only told her two best friends, and decides that she should stop the whole dating thing for a while. But then the extremely cute Takumi starts working at the library she works at.

This is a very plotless book; it’s about Alice’s personal journey with her asexuality, her feelings towards Takumi, her changing relationship with her best friends, and her reluctance to follow in her family’s footsteps and get a law degree. Luckily, I loved Alice as a main character. She’s extremely bubbly and loves all things cute, whether that’s objects, animals or people. I also really loved Takumi (until the very end that is, but I’ll get more into that later) and their dynamic was so much fun. Takumi initially makes Alice question whether she is asexual or if she falls somewhere else on the spectrum, but she ultimately comes to the conclusion that even if she has a crush on him she is still asexual. A lot of the book is made up of these two interacting and I loved almost every interaction they had.

The side characters I unfortunately had more issues with. The main ones are: Feenie and Ryan (Alice’s best friends/roommates who are in love), Alice’s parents and siblings (all who are much older than you would expect from a nineteen year-old protagonist), and the counselor Alice goes to see. On the whole, none of them were bad. I loved seeing Alice going to a counselor and the positive therapy rep the book had, and it also emphasising that you don’t need a mental illness or for something to be going horribly wrong to seek help.

Alice’s family were fine and I like that Alice mentions how having siblings decades older than her and parents who are in their seventies has affected her, as well as how the expectations that she will also get a degree in law makes her feel. They were rarely physically present in the story because Alice doesn’t live at home, but they talk on the phone fairly regularly and were always a constant presence.

Feenie and Ryan I had… more issues with. For most of the book I loved them; they were fun side characters and I liked their relationship with Alice. But when they were experiencing conflict I really started to not care for them, especially Feenie. Spoilers for the end of the book! Basically, the three of them have a ‘Family Night’ regularly and on one such night Feenie and Ryan want to go to a party so Alice tags along, planning on having a sort of Family Night at the party. But then Alice goes to get drinks and when she returns they’re not there. She asks someone nearby where they are and they say that the two have gone upstairs. Alice is upset by this and ends up ditching the party to hang out with Takumi. Feenie and Ryan, but mostly Feenie, are really upset by this, not seeming to understand how rude and exclusive they were being by abandoning Alice at this party. Then, when everything is resolved, Alice ends up being the one apologising because she ditched them and she’s been abandoning them for Takumi. Feenie literally refuses to apologise. This drove me mental because it’s seen as the ‘proper resolution’ to the conflict but I just could not get over how insensitive Feenie was being about the whole situation, and the fact that Alice was the one who took most of the blame.

Moving on, let’s chat quickly about the writing style. One of the biggest criticisms of this book that I’ve seen is that brackets are used fairly regularly, at least once every few pages. This, on the whole, didn’t bother me. There were times when I thought they were unnecessary, but all in all I thought they were used well as a way to display the almost-subconscious thoughts Alice was having about certain situations.

Now, when talking about the rep, I am not black, biromantic or asexual. But I am pansexual and aromantic, so some of the things Alice goes through definitely hit home. I loved seeing Alice having to deal with microaggressions, and also Takumi talking about the ones he’s faced and how, even though they both POC, they were initially worried that the other one would do dickish things out of ignorance.

Overall, I thought that the asexual rep was done really well. Again, I am not asexual, but almost all of the shit that gets flung at asexuals gets flung at aromantics too, so I do have some experience in that. I liked seeing Alice’s initial reluctance to even use the word asexual, and how terrified she was of telling people because of the reactions she had gotten. All of Alice’s internal stuff, in fact, I really loved. What I didn’t love as much was Takumi’s reaction at the end. I didn’t start hating him by any means, but after Alice had said that she liked him his reaction was… not great. It wasn’t outright aphobic, but some of his comments made me deeply uncomfortable as he tries to wrap his mind around how Alice can be attracted to him but not sexually. This discomfort is not factoring into my rating of the book, though, because I am aware that this is an extremely personal thing, and ultimately the character isn’t aphobic in any way.

SapphicAThon continues to go really well! I’m three-for-three now which is probably the best track record I’ve ever had for a readathon. Please also remember that my giving it a 3.5 does not mean I hated it. In fact, if not for the whole Feenie situation, this would have probably been a 4. So I would still wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who finds the premise interesting.