rep: asexual mc, m/m romance, vegetarian mc
tw: cancer, homophobia, cyberbullying

Tash Hearts Tolstoy follows our main character, Tash who comes from Russian, Czech & Buddist parents. Tash is also a vegetarian with her mother. Throughout the course of the summer, Tash and her best friend Jack spend their time filming and directing their web series, Unhappy Families a recreation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Suddenly, when a popular channel gives their web series a shout out, their channel starts going viral and subscribers are rolling in like madness.

I really loved seeing how Tash was personally affected by her web series getting recognition and growing as quick as it did. As someone who makes YouTube videos, I could definitely relate to Tash's feelings toward hate comments and the constant worry that a video won't receive the response you wanted. Although, I really disliked how her editor and producer, Jack would react to Tash's reactions and belittle her for being excited and full of mixed emotions.

Over 100 pages into the book, Tash explains being asexual. I really enjoyed this representation because it's a sexuality that I'm not educated on. The author did a great job of incorporating the reactions from non-ace people by telling Tash it's not real, or they just don't understand it. Tash is not given a lot of validation in real life, but online - by researching and talking to people in forums. I could relate to this a lot because when I was coming to terms with being trans, these were some of the resources I used heavily and had helped me immensely. Overall, after reading this book I feel like I know more about how ace people feel since I only had small details.

Highly recommend this, it was a fun read & I loved how it didn't just focus on Tash but the side characters were given their own stories, too.