Tag Archives: asexuality

Maggie reviews Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

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Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

I really enjoyed Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation, and it is on my rec shortlist when people want fantasy or YA recs. So when I walked by the sequel in stores I was incredibly excited at A) the fact that it was out and B) how amazing the cover is. The complete drama of those outfits with the understated blood splatter is everything I wanted. Black heroines looking fancy? Black heroines looking so fancy while still fighting zombies? The amazing cut of Jane’s suit and blouse and her intimidatingly direct stare? I love every single thing about it. Of course, between wanting to reread Dread Nation so I could remember every detail and library hold lists and just everything else that has happened this year, it took me longer than planned to get ahold of the audiobook, but I am so happy I finally did, and that I get to review it right after reviewing Dread Nation.

In Deathless Divide, Justina Ireland picks up exactly where Dread Nation left off: with Jane, Kate, and a group of miscellaneous other people they’ve accumulated escaping the doomed town of Summerland ahead of a horde of zombies. In possession of a letter that says that her mother is no longer at Rose Hill plantation but is instead headed for California, Jane wants to head that way to find her, but lack of supplies and the needs of the civilians with them force them to head for the nearby town of Nicodemus. There they are reunited with past acquaintances and have to convince the people of their temporary home that the town’s defenses will not stand against the oncoming horde in a frightening echo of their time in Summerland. The ending of Nicodemus, like Summerland, is catastrophic for everyone there, and Ireland uses its demise as a point for a time jump that has both Jane and Kate trying to make new lives for themselves in California, but separated from each other and facing terrible hardship and prejudice once again. Between proper Kate struggling to find a place for herself where she feels fulfilled and vengeance-obsessed Jane making a name for herself but being unable to rest, Ireland highlights a full range of experiences and difficult choices they face as Black women trying to survive in country filled with racism, misogyny, and, of course, zombies.

The choice between love and vengeance is a pretty standard one in literature, but Ireland explores the whole spectrum of love that can drive people. From family – where Jane’s memories of her mother are part of what drives her to keep moving and her subsequent grappling with how memory doesn’t match reality – to friendship – Jane and Katherine are continually motivated by the friendship they’ve forged through shared tribulations – Jane and Kate struggle to make sense of the world where they find themselves and what they want out of life. Romance gets a full treatment too, even though it isn’t the main focus. Kate is asexual, and her musings on whether she should try to stomach getting married for the benefits it would provide for her and others, as well as her remembering how trapped she felt as a youth when she thought it was her only option, were poignant and incredibly emotional for me. Kate’s journey is about her finding what makes her thrive in life while struggling with how that doesn’t line up with society’s expectations, and I think it is an incredibly great arc to see in what is ostensibly a historical horror/thriller.

Jane, on the other hand, has to deal with the price of vengeance versus what she wants out of life outside of it. She has some brushes with romance – honestly her relationship with Callie was refreshing both in that it was queer and that she accepted its short-term nature with a foray into heartache that is quickly tempered by pragmatism, something lacking in a lot of YA – but her real motivation for much of the time is getting vengeance on Gideon, the scientist whose experiments have killed a lot of people Jane cared for and irrevocably changed her own life. Becoming a bounty hunter in order to gather information to track him down, Jane enters a brutal world and becomes equally as brutal herself to survive. Over and over again she is forced to choose pursuing vengeance at the cost of her relationships with others, and every time she chooses vengeance she can feel the toll it takes on her soul. It was refreshing to see a character who could admit to her changing attitude and frankly start to wonder if it was all worth it or what would be left after she accomplished her goal. On top of that she has to deal with how the world perceives her. While Kate has to deal with the physiological ramifications of being white passing and of being attractive to men when she is not attracted to them herself, Jane has to deal with her reputation. Her nickname – The Devil’s Bitch – manages to be both threatening and derogatory, and she is forced to be aggressive when dealing with the rest of the world and face the reactions to an aggressive Black woman who doesn’t hesitate to use violence to protect herself. Her emotional journey through grief and vengeance to something more peaceful feels entirely earned and not any sort of magic switch moment, and I felt like the ending was satisfying and was something entirely true to the growing they all did throughout the book.

In Deathless Divide, Justina Ireland continues her fascinating story of life in a post-Civil War, post-zombie apocalypse America. I thought this continued the first book extremely well, and I really enjoyed how the characters stayed true to themselves. It would have been really easy for the vengeance quest or their constant journeying to become flat, but each character really grew and had a lot of great introspective moments. Jane and Kate’s wildly differing worldviews contrasted well, and I really enjoyed the casual queerness and asexuality rep. Whether you’re here for the zombies or for queer action women with swords, it’s a very satisfying story. I also highly recommend the audiobook version. Bahni Turpin and Jordan Cobb are amazing narrators, and I was really pulled into the story and the rotating POVs so well.

Danika reviews The Lost Coast by Amy Rose Capetta

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The Lost Coast by Amy Rose Capetta

This was my most-anticipated book of 2019, and it lived up to the hype. I knew from the time that I heard about a YA novel featuring six queer witches among the California redwood forests, I was hooked. This is such an atmospheric, encompassing read. It’s told in a way that mirrors the fantastical events: we see the story through different time periods and perspectives (Danny–the main character, The Grays–the witches, the Ravens, the Trees, the students at their high school, etc), giving a piecemeal account that advanced remarkably organically. I found that I had to let the story wash over me, without getting too bogged down with the details. 

I still get a little thrill out of seeing books that actually use the word queer in the description, so that’s always a plus, but it exceeded my expectations on the representation front. It’s no coincidence that this is the queerest YA book I’ve read since Amy Rose Capetta’s Once and Future. With a few exceptions (Anger is a Gift and Down to the Bone come to mind), I still don’t see a lot of YA (or books in general) that feature a queer friend group. To have 6 queer witches that celebrate their identities is–I hesitate to say–magical to read about. The group includes a grey ace non-binary character, a black bisexual character, a main character who identifies as queer, a character with synesthesia, a character with a limp, and a Filipino character. These characters discuss their labels and identities freely and without shame. This book includes a character casually using the phrase “femme as fuck.” Not only that, but Danny is a queer teenage girl who enjoys her sexuality. Kissing is her favourite thing to do, and she usually kisses girls. Before moving to Tempest, she spent her time finding all the girls in the school who wanted to kiss her, and kissing them. I feel like sapphic YA often shies away from explicit sexuality, while The Lost Coast celebrates sexuality/sensuality, and includes an on-the-page f/f sex scene.

I found myself partway through this book, impatient to reread it. Because there are so many central characters as well as perspective and time period shifts, I felt like I couldn’t keep track of it all the first time through. It wasn’t a problem, because this has such an eerie, dreamlike feel that this disorientation just added to the experience. Although I am Canadian, I live on the west coast, and the magical, foreboding, awe-some power of the forest described in The Lost Coast really spoke to me. By the end of the book, I did feel satisfied that I understood the crux of the plot despite my initial confusion, but I am still excited to read this again on a breezy October evening, diving into this magical and encompassing story with a better understanding of the personalities contained there.

There were a few moments that really made me stop to appreciate and process them. At one point, Danny realizes that although her mother loves her, she doesn’t understand her: “there are parts of me–maybe the best parts–that she will never see, because they’re too strange.” Despite the flack that The Well of Loneliness gets, I still find that one line from it echoes through queer lit even to the present, where the main character declares that her love–which she has been shamed and hated for–is the best thing about her. I see this in Danny, too, this confusion/shame/outrage that the qualities others may resent or want to change about us may be our best qualities, what we most have to offer to the world. Later on, Danny realizes that part of the reason that the Grays touch so much is that they recognize that people like them have been denied this in earlier times, that every kiss is also in tribute to the queer people who were not able to openly kiss the people they wanted to. Especially in the conclusion of this story, there is a real recognition of queer people through time, which I really appreciated.

This is a beautiful book that I feel like so many people have been asking for. It’s an atmospheric Fantasy story. It has diverse queer representation. It’s whimsical and has a big queer cast, all of whom have their own magical specialization. I think this deserves so much more attention. Amy Rose Capetta has really pushed queer YA forward, between this and Once and Future. I’m so glad that 2019 is bringing us the stories we’ve been craving for so many years. Please pick up this story of chosen family and finding your own magic, and spread the word, because I know so many readers have been waiting for a story just like this.

Tierney reviews Perfect Rhythm by Jae

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[Trigger warning for the death of a parent.]

When pop star Jenna Blake gets a call from her mom saying her dad has had a stroke, she returns home to her small hometown of Fair Oaks, Missouri for the first time in five years, and goes back to being Leontyne Blake once more. As she works on rebuilding her relationship with her parents, she begins to evaluate what exactly she wants from life–all while getting closer and closer to Holly, her former high school classmate and her dad’s stay-at-home nurse (small-town life, y’all). On her end, Holly goes from thinking Leo is a self-absorbed jerk, to counting her as a friend, then maybe more–but first she wants to make sure Leo knows that while she is romantically attracted to women, she is asexual.

It took me a while to get into Perfect Rhythm, but once I did, I was hooked. In part, it takes the novel a while to find its own perfect rhythm: some aspects of the plot and description seem clumsy, especially towards the beginning. Leo’s attraction towards Holly (and her body) seems over-the-top and heavy-handed: there are many descriptions of Leo noticing Holly’s “feminine curves” or doing things like accidentally resting a hand on Holly’s “nicely curved hips,” coupled with Leo spending an inordinate amount of time noticing the fact that Holly is not noticing her (or her body). I’m assuming this is supposed to be tied in with Holly’s asexuality, to contrast how they feel about each other, but it often doesn’t feel authentic (and, at times, Leo’s attitude towards Holly’s body even feels a little gross). The plot in general can also feel a little trite, with regards to how it follows the age-old rom-com story of a big star falling for a small-town girl’s down-to-earth attitude towards fame.

But ultimately I totally fell for the characters, and ended up falling for the plot too, after a bit of a rocky start: that rom-com trope is rejuvenated with a homoromantic asexual woman as half of the (queer!) pairing. The novel does an excellent job showcasing what intimacy and sensuality can look like without being attached to sex, while also depicting what sex can look like for an asexual person and an allosexual person (this particular chapter has a warning for readers who might want to skip a graphic sex scene). And the characters are excellent at modeling how partners with different expectations and needs can make a relationship work–regularly talking things out, stating what they need, being explicit about their boundaries (and accepting of their partner’s boundaries).

One of my romance novel pet peeves is characters who just can’t seem to talk to each other, but still somehow fall for one another and ride off into the sunset: once Holly and Leo stop operating off of their assumptions and spend time talking and listening to one another, they have a beautiful relationship that feels so very real to me. The story centers itself for the most part on Leo’s perspective, so Holly’s character is not quite as fleshed out, but Leo’s journey is absolutely moving and satisfying.

The plot of Perfect Rhythm is also pleasantly multifaceted: the main focus is on Leo’s growing relationship with Holly, and the associated obstacles along the way, but Jae depicts other facets of Leo’s life: her relationship with her family and small-town Fair Oaks, her unhappiness with her life of stardom, her father’s infirmity (and eventual death). It’s also a story of a queer woman coming back to her small hometown and finding more acceptance and happiness there that she could have thought possible, rewriting a common narrative that so often depicts the opposite, much like Rachel Spangler’s The Long Way Home (another excellent romance novel).

Perfect Rhythm is a sweet romance novel that, despite a perhaps shaky beginning, ultimately captivates the reader and showcases the blooming of a delightful relationship. It’s definitely worth a read, especially if you’re into romances that showcase not only a beautiful romance and lead-up to a relationship, but also the thoughtful communication that keeps relationships going. Swoon!

Aoife reviews Thaw by Elyse Springer

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**/*

Closer to a 2 than a 3, but it gets bonus points for asexuality and librarians.

I was really excited about this book–I downloaded it literally as soon as I saw the email. I’m grey ace myself, so asexual representation is something I’m personally invested in. That said, I was expecting a light read, and that’s what I got.

I did the reading glo up backwards. I started out with Austen, Bronte, and Shakespeare in primary school, and when I got to high school, I discovered the trashy romance subset of YA. I like both romance and YA, and neither genre is inherently trashy or lesser than any other. The books I got into in year 7 were mainly just shit books–badly written, two dimensional, and very shallow. I enjoyed them, but nowadays if I’m looking for a hetero romance/YA, my standards are higher. However! I didn’t realise I was bisexual until quite a while later, and unfortunately there is quite a lot less sapphic anything than hetero anything; this is to say, I read sapphic books that I would DNF if they were hetero. 

So, this is one of those books. This is not to say that it isn’t enjoyable, or fun–just that it is perhaps not incredibly well written and that I didn’t find it particularly believable. It’s light and fluffy, if formulaic, and while the characters are a bit two-dimensional, they’re endearing. The story follows Abby, a librarian, and Gabrielle, a famous model and ex-actress, who meet by chance and make a connection. Abby struggles with her asexuality in the context of a relationship, and Gabrielle has ~secrets~. These secrets lead to unnecessary conflict, drawing the two apart, which leads to a grand gesture and our heroines reuniting; essentially, plot you can see a mile off. It’s very obviously second in a continuing series, which I wasn’t super into – there was a lot of time spent rehashing the plot of book 1 and placing hooks for the following two. But hey–escapism is escapism.

My main quibble, if we’re bypassing what’s been covered, is the ‘asexuality 101’ aspect of the book. This is, again, a personal thing–I know what asexuality is and I’m looking to see it reflected in a fluffy romance, not a lesson. I’m sure (I read some Goodreads reviews when I was shelving it) there are people who appreciated this aspect of it–Kristy found it a “good learning experience”–but I found it unnecessary, like one of those books which agonises over explaining to the reader the phenomenon of non-men being attracted to non-men. I also felt that the book lacked chemistry, both romantic and platonic.

That said, it was fine! It was light and distracted me for about an hour, and it definitely got bonus points for including librarians and asexuality. I read it as a book which was maybe aimed at helping people realise they were asexual, or helping people understand asexuality, which is great–just not really where I’m at.

Content warning for some kind of dub con stuff and a few instances of abusive behaviour and language (neither between the main characters).

Marthese reviews Aces by Kathryn Burns

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aces

‘I did not adult well’

Aces is a short book on the relationship between Astrid and Hollis, two very creative women living in Seattle. They both work in retail but have a shared passion for writing. The story is told from Astrid’s perspective.

This story feels real, is not that cliché and is very diverse with its characters. Most times, the diversity is built up and not introduced at once and it does not feel like the characters are diverse simply to be so, they just are.

Astrid works at a shoe shop, has had a variety of hobbies and has a lack of self-confidence. She does not, at first, get on with her girlfriend’s flatmate Lloyd. This is however, explained in what I thought was a good reason. Astrid loves Hollis a lot, though she feels that Hollis is always right and keeps her emotions in check too much.

Hollis works in cosmetics but her other passion is blogging and writing. She writes fanfiction as well and has some geeking moments in the book. She also loves her flatmate’s cat Schrodinger. As she likes writing and expresses herself in that method, she writes letters about Astrid which Astrid finds in unexpected places. One of these letters brings about the confession that Hollis is asexual. After that, their relationship has better communication but does not change much.

This book has a lot of cool stuff in it and whether they are mentioned in detail or only in passing, I think that it is a good depiction of queer reality. Currently pop culture and recent history are mentioned but there is a 90s vibe at times. As the characters attend Poetry Slam Mondays, we are introduced to some poetry slam! Video making and blogging are mentioned and are done by at least four characters. Minimalism is also brought about by necessity. Stuff like transitioning, non-binary, dysphoria, period pains, drag, on coming out as a continuous process and bi-erasure are topics of discussion or thought in the story.

There are many characters, whether they appear often or simply once, with various gender identities. The families mentioned are also of different forms. Their group of friends is very varied but like Clementine said, Astrid brings them together.

What I also liked in the story, was that there was the depiction on genuine love, not too perfect and that information processing was done in a healthy way. Although at first Astrid bothered me a bit, she grew on me while I liked Hollis from the beginning because I could relate to her.  I think the best thing was however, when there was a discussion on shipping in fanfiction and how that is still part of asexuality.

I do not have a particular thing that I particularly did not like although Astrid was slightly bothersome in the beginning as I had the perception that she was too self-centred. This was not so much the case and it just takes a while to get used to the character. There was also an instance that the term ‘transgendered’ was used instead of ‘transgender’ however, I think that was due to language use.

I think that there are so few books that speak about asexuality in their plot, much less when they are combined with various other diverse characters and speaking so planning on reality, with deep thoughts as everyday occurrences. Perfect for over-thinkers like me! It truly is a love story that gives you hope. Where the characters do not follow a formula but make the love their own.

I recommend this book for people that want to read a book with an asexual character, for people that want to read more books with trans inclusiveness (including non-binary), for geeky people that like to see fanfiction, slam poetry and internet culture incorporated into the life of the characters and for people that want to read a short but realistic love story.