Loveless by Alice Oseman: Review

Happy Pride month! It’s been a hot minute, but I thought I’d talk about Loveless, by Alice Oseman. This is one of my absolute favourite books surrounding an aroace character, and one of the first that made me feel truly seen as an aro-spec asexual. I have so many highlights in this book, it’s unreal.

Loveless is a novel about love. It’s about how love is not always what you expect, or what allo-cisheteronormative society presents it to be. It follows Georgia’s journey from being terrified that she would be alone forever, to self acceptance and realising how love can still be powerful, beautiful, and meaningful when it isn’t romantic or sexual.

“I had spent the whole of my life believing that romantic love was waiting for me. That one day I would find it and I would be totally, finally happy.”

Georgia is just starting out at university, meeting new friends while also trying to stay with her pre-university best friends, Pip and Jason. At the same time, with the help of her roommate Rooney, she is trying to figure out the uncertainty that is her sexuality. Why she hasn’t ever kissed a boy, or a girl, whether that makes her immature.

Loveless challenges the boundaries of what we assume of romantic, sexual, and platonic love – that these concepts are not as binary as commonly believed. It’s a story about understanding love for what it is, and that the platonic form is not any less worth appreciation and grand gestures.

Georgia, in her quest to have the college romance fanfic of her dreams, despite not actually wanting that, temporarily lost sight of what was truly important to her. That her true loves were actually right in front of her this whole time: her friends.

“Give your friendships the magic you would give a romance.”

“I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in way I’ve never felt in my fucking life.”

Georgia expresses her insecurities throughout Loveless, that she would indeed end up “Loveless” because she thinks she will never find her special person.

“I just care about you so much… but I’ve always got this fear that… one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or… I don’t know. I’m never going to fall in love, so… my friendships are all I have, so… I just… can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.”

This really hit the nail on the head for me, as someone on the aspectrum that doesn’t want to be in a romantic or sexual relationship. It’s often tough to come to terms with it, when the world has an amatonormative framework set up, so it is assumed that everyone will split into monogamous relationships, which are valued over friendships. This book challenges the idea, and proposes that a “special person” doesn’t need to be the amatonormative type of special (a sexual or romantic partner), and can instead be a friend.

I do really wish I could have read a book like Loveless when I was an early-teenager. It’s a book I can see myself in, in many ways, and it resonates so deeply with me. It would have let me know I was not alone, acknowledging that there are other aspectrum people out there, and there are a range of experiences of being asexual and aromantic. If you read or have read Loveless, I hope it helps you feel seen too.

“I hoped she felt safe, at least (…) I hoped she felt safe with me.”

Links:

StoryGraph / Portal Bookshop