Loveless was another Alice Oseman knockout YA contemporary. The story follows Georgia Warr a college freshman navigating her desire to be in a romantic relationship despite her seeming inability to find love. I will warn that Oseman has an incredibly close first-person narrative style that may make this book, and especially its first half, difficult to read. Georgia and the other prominent side characters in the series, like most teenagers, are very stuck in their own heads. They often jump to conclusions and make short-sided, selfish choices and fail to make obvious connections which may make this book a frustrating read. However, these aspects of the characters make our main cast feel all the more real.

Loveless is a coming of age story about a girl coming into her identity as asexual romantic and Oseman’s ownvoices depiction of that was stellar. Seeing Georgia going through the long and arduous process of discovering and accepting her sexuality was while occasionally frustrating heartwarming nonetheless. I’ve never experienced media with asexual romantic representation and I’m glad to see that this book might make teens who feel lost and confused comforted and understood. And the way Oseman unpacked and directed the various ways society enforces heteronormativity and allosexuality (feeling romantic and/or sexual attraction) was spot on and even helped me unpack my own feelings about my sexuality.

Oseman’s characters are naturalistic in a way that makes them very easy to connect to and the strong friendships at the core of the novel were wonderful to read about. The side characters in this story Rooney, Pip and Jason felt fully fleshed out and individual in a way that made the story feel whole. Oseman’s underlying message about the importance of friendships and their equal importance and meaning as romantic relationships really hit the mark with me. I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who loves grand romantic gestures, Shakespeare societies, and complex friendship dynamics.