Published by: Harper Collins
It was all sinking in. I’d never had a crush on anyone. No boys, no girls, not a single person I had ever met. What did that mean?
Georgia feels loveless – in the romantic sense, anyway. She’s eighteen, never been in a relationship, or even had a crush on a single person in her whole life. She thinks she's an anomaly, people call her weird, and she feels a little broken. But she still adores romance – weddings, fan fiction, and happily ever afters. She knows she’ll find her person one day … right?
After a disastrous summer, Georgia is now at university, hundreds of miles from home. She is more determined than ever to find love – and her annoying roommate, Rooney, is a bit of a love expert, so perhaps she can help.
But maybe Georgia just doesn’t feel that way about guys. Or girls. Or anyone at all. Maybe that's okay. Maybe she can find happiness without falling in love. And maybe Rooney is a little more loveless than she first appears.
Georgia has never been in love, never kissed anyone, never even had a crush – but as a fanfic-obsessed romantic she’s sure she’ll find her person one day.
As she starts university with her best friends, Pip and Jason, in a whole new town far from home, Georgia’s ready to find romance, and with her outgoing roommate on her side and a place in the Shakespeare Society, her ‘teenage dream’ is in sight.
But when her romance plan wreaks havoc amongst her friends, Georgia ends up in her own comedy of errors, and she starts to question why love seems so easy for other people but not for her. With new terms thrown at her – asexual, aromantic – Georgia is more uncertain about her feelings than ever.
Is she destined to remain loveless? Or has she been looking for the wrong thing all along?
Full of vibrant, lovable characters each with their own unique story, Loveless also gave me lots of food for thought. Before hearing about Loveless, aromantic and asexual sexualities were something I vaguely knew of by name but not nature. The book undoubtedly explores areas of LGBTQ+ representation that were mostly new to me. It explains so much about different sexuality types that aren’t commonly represented.
I enjoyed Alice Oseman’s style, and this clearly felt like an own voice story. As a result, her narrative voice is both insightful, but also limited. I think it’s really vital to remember that everyone’s experiences and feelings vary in all kinds of ways. Through the characters, the author has done a remarkable job in showing one unique perspective on what asexuality and aromanticism can mean.
Oseman summed up the spectrums pretty nicely in this quote: “The aromantic and asexual spectrums weren’t just straight lines. They were radar charts with at least a dozen different axes.”
Georgia’s character growth is really interesting as the plot unfolds. Her story is full of confusion, figuring things out and coming to terms with an asexual identity. It was so refreshing to see a character like this reflected, and I enjoyed reading about her journey. I’m hopeful that this original little book will reassure many young people that there's a happy, accepting future of love out there for all who identify as asexual, in friendships deeper than any romance.
Loveless is a sprightly, affecting work from a writer at the top of her game and it really is no surprise she is considered one of the most authentic and talked-about voices in contemporary YA at the moment. Even for readers no longer in their teens, Oseman's writing feels like retrospective hand holding.
It's full of flawed, messy characters and bad decisions and aching holes of loneliness. I wasn't expecting to get so attached to the characters, but I really did find all of them surprisingly likeable. I liked the flirtatious rivalry between Pip and Rooney, and the friendship trio between Jason, Pip and Georgia was completely heart-warming, believable and sweet. The final chapter provides a heartwarming and positive conclusion to the story, with enough space for a possible sequel at some point in the future.
Loveless is a journey of identity, self-acceptance, and finding out how many different types of love there really are. And ultimately that no one is really loveless after all.
