Staff Picks

A fun and genuine early college story featuring two A-spec characters! The library's LGBTQIA book club for teens, Book Queeries, read and discussed this book with positive reviews from teen attendees who loved the story because it featured aromantic and asexual characters. Author Ann Zhao captures the undergrad anxiety well, while sprinkling multimedia dialogue throughout. Recommend to fans of Alice Oseman and Becky Albertalli.

 

Publisher description:

Sophie Chi is in her first year at Wellesley College (despite her parents’ wishes that she attend a 'real' university, rather than a liberal arts school) and has long accepted her aromantic and asexual identities. Despite knowing she’ll never fall in love, she enjoys running an Instagram account that offers relationship advice to students at Wellesley. No one except her roommate knows that she’s behind the incredibly popular 'Dear Wendy' account. When Joanna 'Jo' Ephron -- also a first-year student at Wellesley -- created their 'Sincerely Wanda' account, it wasn't at all meant to be serious or take off like it does -- not like Dear Wendy’s. But now they might have a rivalry of sorts with Dear Wendy? Oops. As if Jo’s not busy enough having existential crises over gender, the fact that she’ll never truly be loved or be enough, or her few friends finding The One and forgetting her! While tensions are rising online, Sophie and Jo are getting closer in real life, bonding over their shared aroace identities. As their friendship develops and they work together to start a campus organization for other a-spec students, can their growing bond survive if they learn just who’s behind the Wendy and Wanda accounts?

 

Georgia is eighteen years old, and she has never been in love. Loveless follows Georgia’s journey through her first year of university, as she meets new friends, questions old friendships, and begins to come to terms with who she truly is.

- Anonymous tenth-grade teen volunteer

Publisher's description:

This is the funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of Georgia, who doesn't understand why she can't crush and kiss and make out like her friends do. She's surrounded by the narrative that dating + sex = love. It's not until she gets to college that she discovers the A range of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum — coming to understand herself as asexual/aromantic. Disrupting the narrative that she's been told since birth isn't easy — there are many mistakes along the way to inviting people into a newly found articulation of an always-known part of your identity. But Georgia's determined to get her life right, with the help of (and despite the major drama of) her friends.

 

Find Loveless in our online catalog.
 

This story is a disturbing yet powerful exploration of trauma, imagination, and the limits of conformity. While the book's cute cover belies its dark and uncomfortable content, Murata masterfully weaves elements of magical realism to create a haunting story that lingers on the mind.

 

Publisher's description:

As a child, Natsuki doesn't fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. Each summer, Natsuki counts down the days until her family drives into the mountains of Nagano to visit her grandparents in their wooden house in the forest. One summer, her cousin Yuu confides to Natsuki that he is an extraterrestrial, and Natsuki starts to wonder if she might be an alien too. Later, as a married woman, Natsuki feels forced to fit in to a society she deems a "baby factory" but wonders if there is more to the world than the mundane reality everyone else seems to accept. The answers are out there, and Natsuki has the power to find them.

 

This book dives into some of the A’s in LGBTQIA+ and is by Alice Oseman, who wrote the Heartstopper series. The book follows Georgia and Pip, two high school friends, and their journey through college, sexuality and attraction. 10/10. If you like Shakespeare or acting this might also be a good book for you. 

- Anonymous ninth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

 

This is the funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of Georgia, who doesn't understand why she can't crush and kiss and make out like her friends do. She's surrounded by the narrative that dating + sex = love. It's not until she gets to college that she discovers the A range of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum — coming to understand herself as asexual/aromantic. Disrupting the narrative that she's been told since birth isn't easy — there are many mistakes along the way to inviting people into a newly found articulation of an always-known part of your identity. But Georgia's determined to get her life right, with the help of (and despite the major drama of) her friends.

Find Loveless in our online catalog.