Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - Loveless

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Loveless by Alice Oseman

32 reviews

melsage1823's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Wow just wow a book has never left me so speechless before. As much as I would be interested in Heartstopper I'm tired of reading the same old Lgtbq+ stories with two yt gay boys falling in love. I want to read more stuff that represents me and as a Aromantic Spec Asexual I can Loveless definitely didn't disappoint I could absolutely relate to Georgia's experiences.
I do have some issues but they don't bring down the book for me. As a Nonbinary person I thought Sunil was a very good character but I felt like he should have balanced between both He or They or just specified one set of pronouns. I know they're not a main character but I felt like his gender journey could have been a bit more of a side plot. However I did enjoy his experiences as a Gay Asexual Enby partly being able to help Georgia though. Same with Jason apart from his huge spoiler subplot with Georgia we didn't get to know too much about him and explore further. Also would have appreciated TWs for when extremely awkward chapters came in the book for the sex repulsed Ace peeps considering the audience but it was authentic and I liked that. If you have issues with the book its understandable like hopefully they'll be more Aro Ace Spec own voices where they can add more diverse books and experiences like Demiromantic Asexual character pls. All I'm saying is that especially if your on the Aro Ace spec and this book doesn't rep you authentically your feelings are valid but I'm in the area I think Oseman tried to target as that's her own experience too. Also if your not Autistic that's why you might struggle with this as Georgia Warr is definitely Autistic coded and the rep makes me so happy I wish it wa actually cannon.

Onto positives. Alice Oseman created a small cast of amazing and well developed characters that were highly entertaining. She knows how to write teenagers and I was glad that everyone acted like human teens struggling with emotions. None of the drama in the book felt forced at all.
I'm not a fan of Shakespeare but Oseman managed to hugely get me invested in the play subplot and how much the group comes to mean to Georgia.
Speaking of Georgia I absolutely loved her character development and the fact that due to us already knowing we as the readers are like supportive invisible friends cheering from the sidelines. She's so human with her struggles and I like that through her and I guess to an extent Pip and Rooney we get to see how damaging heteronormitivity is and how important it is to spread awareness. With how all the characters act in the book it makes you want to try get rid of your own heternormativity that you've picked up.
Book was accessible for those who are neurodivergent and definitely made it clear when Georgia was texting and receiving messages in a really creative way.

However in terms of accessibility I definitely I advise to read this book in parts as the Acephobia and internalized Acephobia is so raw and authentically true that especially when it was Georgia's own self hatred for herself it hurt like an absolute saw thumb but seeing Georgia get rid of her own internalized Aromantic And Acephobia made you feel proud. Oseman made it really clear in her writing it's ok to have internalized self hate and that getting rid of it is a process.

Don't want to spoil the major Pip x Rooney spoilers who haven't read the book but think Enemies To Lovers but spicy WLW. It's a Pan + Lesbian relationship which I think is incredibly unique rep.

Overall and absolutely incredible standalone book that I would absolutely love a sequel too about Georgia maybe accepting to not be too clingy with her friends as beautiful as Platonic relationships are or a spinoff with Sunill or even Elis Georgia's cousin. Might be a while before I reread because it was so authentically raw but if your an Aromantic Asexual spec person, questioning or an ally looking for a good own voices book I definitely recommend.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Five Stars In My Opinion Absolutely.

Content Warnings

bimess_'s review

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sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

After taking into consideration many of my fellow poc who are on the aroace spectrum, I do not recommend this book to anyone who's figuring out their sexuality. To anyone that expects for the side characters (specifically the poc characters) to have any development outside the main character, they don't.

I did want to know more of the sidecharacters. Especially Pip since I'm a latine person myself. I don't think it was even mentioned which country her family is from either which angers me.

At the end of the day, I enjoyed the book because I had a similar inner war with myself. In terms of being aro and bi simultaneously.

It's true Oseman could've done more. My hope is for this book to be saved and given a sequel that focused on Pip and Sunil. Since they're the ones who had the potential to have powerful stories. But again, Oseman is white. So I'm weary of this as well. Perhaps an adaptation of their stories would be better.

Content Warnings

gabriel_dingle's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was incredibly eye opening for me, and helped me come to terms with my sexuality. All the difficult topics are approached in a very tasteful and easy to understand way. The characters are diverse and very unique, and I loved every one of them. The plot is very engaging, and there were constant hooks being thrown about which kept me reading and interested.

Content Warnings

the_true_monroe's review

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book is doing wonders. It is a beautiful story overall and the character development is amazing- I love so many of the characters and found myself tearing up at moments of platonic love. But also, having asexuality and aromanticism the forefront of a young adult novel by such a popular author is lifechanging. I was the same age as Georgia when I began to realize I was asexual, and had so many similar thoughts and experiences but I am just picturing the people both (1) younger than her who will be able to find the words for what they were feeling before they get into sticky situations or feel too much self hatred and (2) people older than Georgia reading this who may have been through so much pain and confusion due to feeling like something was wrong with them since they could not feel certain ways. We need more stories like this, not just with an asexual/ aromantic focus but with an emphasis on platonic love and how it is not a lower level than romantic love.

Content Warnings

theespressoedition's review against another edition

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challenging emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I've got to admit that I struggled quite a bit with this book. Not because it was a bad book, but because I felt really disconnected from the story and the characters.

There's a lot of discourse surrounding adults reading YA and then getting frustrated when they can't relate to the characters. I'm not going to do that right now. I can't objectively be upset with a YA for having characters that I no longer relate to (or really, never related to because I was never someone who went to uni or struggled with my sexuality). However, it did feel like it was written for a very, very niched-down audience, and I was not the target.

None of these characters were particularly likable to me (aside from Sunil, who is a gem). I realize that there was a lot of growth that needed to happen throughout the story, but even by the end, I felt myself getting more frustrated with them than impressed by their development.

There were some really tender moments in this book that made my heart soar, and that's why I gave this a higher rating than I originally intended. However, for the most part, I felt like this was a very time-consuming story that wasn't intended for me and that's perfectly alright. I know that the target audience will benefit quite a lot from a book like this!

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ashleycmms's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

Content Warnings

lolajh's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I have to say that I am quite disappointed in this book. Going into it I was prepared for the very vast spectrum that is asexuality and aromanticism to be explored. Instead, a vast variety of aromantic and asexual characters were introduced, all of which were on the far end of the spectrum where they experience no attraction. The concept of asexuality and aromanticism being a spectrum is mentioned, but not at all implemented into the four aspec characters in this book.

“Jess – she’s aromantic, meaning she doesn’t feel romantic attraction for anyone.”

Like, yes, this is definitely an example of what being aromantic can feel like for many aromantics, but it is definitely not a universal way to describe aromanticism. Just so frequently this book describes the main character Georgia’s experience with being aroace as the experience for being aromantic and asexual. The fact that it is never mentioned that she is just on the far end of the spectrum and instead just says that what she feels is the blunt of being aroace just seems so iffy.

“It turned out that lots of asexual people still wanted to have sex for all sorts of different reasons, but some felt totally neutral about it, and others – what I’d originally thought – literally despised it. Some asexual people still masturbated; others didn’t have libidos at all.
It also turned out that lots of aromantic people still wanted to be in romantic relationships, despite not feeling those feels. Others didn’t ever want a romantic partner.
And people identified as all sorts of combinations of romantic and sexual – there were gay asexuals, like Sunil, or bisexual aromantics, like Jess, or straight asexuals, pansexual aromantics, and loads more. Some asexual and aromantic people didn’t even like splitting up their attraction into two labels, and some just used the word ‘queer’ to summarise everything. There were words I had to google like ‘demisexual’ and ‘greyromantic’, but even after googling I wasn’t sure exactly what they meant.
The aromantic and asexual spectrums weren’t just straight lines. They were radar charts with at least a dozen different axes.”

Like I could maybe forgive the exclusion of so many aspec experiences if only the absolute perfect description wasn’t in the fucking book! Like this is perfect. I cannot understand why after Georgia looks into the asexual and aromantic spectrum that she doesn’t then think of asexuality and aromanticism AS A SPECTRUM. I know Alice is aroace themself, and clearly she has done a lot of looking into asexuality and aromanticism before publishing this book to come to the conclusion that asexuality and aromanticism is a spectrum, and not at all one-size-fits-all. So the fact that Georgia, after learning of the a-spectrum, she still acts like feeling absolutely no attraction is the true aromantic and asexual experience, I just find that so problematic.

“Aromantic is when you don’t feel romantic attraction and asexual is when you don’t feel sexual attraction.”

Like NO. Please, it is not that linear and Georgia literally researched and discovered that?

Georgia is also clearly sex-repulsed, however that term is never once used to describe her, and instead just makes her push all her intense sex-repulsive thoughts onto other people who have and enjoy sex. She basically just shames absolutely every single mention of sex made by anyone around her.

“People are really out there just … thinking about having sex all the time and they can’t even help it?’ I spluttered. ‘People have dreams about it because they want it that much? How the – I’m losing it. I thought all the movies were exaggerating, but you’re all really out there just craving genitals and embarrassment. This has to be some kind of huge joke.”

That is just so incredibly harmful. Full on just shaming her friends for talking about sex is making sex seem like such a taboo and disgusting thing all over again.

She even makes a comment about how talking about sex around her is “erasing her identity”. 😬 I do not care that this was a joke, that just makes the asexual community look so horrible.

“Dude,’ I said. ‘I’m the one who can’t fall in love. I think you just don’t want to.’
She made a ‘harrumph’ noise.
‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Are you aromantic?’
‘No,’ she grumbled.”
“There. So stop erasing my identity and tell Pip you like her.”

Here’s Georgia talking to her LESBIAN friend about “choosing” her sexuality: 🤗

‘Yeah. I think I’d choose to be gay if I could.’
Pip didn’t say anything for a moment, and I wondered if I’d said something weird or offensive. It was the truth, though. I would have chosen to be gay if I could.
I knew liking girls could be hard when you’re also a girl. It usually was, at least for a while. But it was beautiful too. So fucking beautiful.”

Like shut the fuck up! Lesbianism is not this “uwu cottagecore” fantasy you’re making it seem like it is. It is an incredibly marginalised community that clearly neither Georgia or the author understands.

Speaking of her lesbian friend, let’s talk about her. Pip. A butch Latina lesbian, who is extremely stereotyped as aggressive and mean, which is a very harmful portrayal of her lesbianism and her Latina identity, and is less forgiveable when the author is white and also not a lesbian. Pip is also portrayed like she is trying to “convince” Georgia she’s a lesbian because she clearly doesn’t like guys (Pip didn’t know she didn’t like girls either), and basically doing the whole “pushing sexuality onto people” thing that does not at all happen in real life, but is something the lesbian community is constantly demonised for, so pushing all these very harmful traits onto the one lesbian character is definitely not good!

Then there’s Rooney, a bi/pan stereotype, who sleeps around and has casual sex often, which would be fine if it weren’t for it being described that she does this due to her trauma in a previous relationship, and the constant shaming by Georgia, once more.

And Sunil. They are a nonbinary character immediately introduced as using he/they pronouns, yet, throughout the entire book, they/them is never ONCE used for him, not even by his best friend, and their identity is clearly not respected by Georgia either, because she only uses he/him for them as well. That’s fucking weird!

Finally, I don’t think Georgia should have been forgiven in the end. She fucking USED her best friend who was in love with her as an experiment for her sexuality and then kissed her other best friend’s crush 👍 Also why are all Alice’s aroace characters autistic-coded and lowkey emotionless beings?

Content Warnings