Books of 2026: BEING ARO ed. by Madeline Dyer and Rosiee Thor.
I swear I didn't paint all the walls in my house to match queer anthology covers, I just know what I like.
Earlier this year, I finally got around to reading BEING ACE (which I enjoyed!), specifically because BEING ARO came out last month. Since both of those are #MyLabels, and I write enough YA that I still want a finger on that pulse, I acquired this one, too. I was curious to see what recurrent themes would emerge in an aro anthology aimed at teens, because I feel like it's still much easier to find explicit ace rep than aro rep in tradpub spaces.
ARO was two pieces slimmer than ACE (12 to 14, respectively), although a higher proportion of the stories were experimental, which I appreciated (we love a good second person in this house!). Most of the aro stories were spec, although the first one was firmly contemporary (and read like Aro 101: A Primer On The Bi To Aro Pipeline). This collection featured compulsory pairing as a literal curse, zombies as amatonormativity as zombies (rinse and repeat), choosing your lovingly-crafted sword over a partner, partly human construct villains, and magical book dragons and censorship, just to recap a few my favorites, apparently:
"The Binding" by Soumi Roy
"Lovesick" by Taka Owen
"Swordmaiden" by Kalyn Josephson
"Indulge the Other" by Laura Pohl (!!!!!!)(favoritest)
"Paper Rebellions" by Rukman Ragas (honorable mention)
Unfortunately, I felt like a handful of the other stories suffered from dodgy worldbuilding, and with fewer in there, it had a more noticeable impact on the overall quality. I wanted to love the one about pilots, but I couldn't take the nomenclature seriously (and I've got major beef with a literal spaceship not being airtight. hello??? you're zipping around in the VACUUM OF SPACE??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN ALIEN GAS IS GETTING INTO YOUR SHIP--); I wanted to like the one with the explicitly alloaro protag, but don't set something "in 1699" and then drop marrying ~for love~ as standard practice into the first three pages (and for the love of God do not over-complicate your 29-page short story--we did not need to go on that whole spell book fetch quest when a Much Simpler Solution was literally right there, and the Simpler Solution was literally how the story ended after all, why didn't you all just START THERE)(this story peeved me most lol. I don't recall being Actively Peeved while reading ACE); I wanted to like the one involving cloning mammoths but the SF elements and the fantasy elements (Neanderthal shaman time traveling, yes from her POV too) just weren't clicking for me.
While I appreciate that both anthologies exist (I'm genuinely so happy that ace and aro teens can see books like these on the shelf!), overall I found BEING ACE to be the stronger collection. There are a few bangers in here, but I can't throw my endorsement behind this Whole Book as readily as the other.
Still, though: Happy Pride, y'all :D