A review by elerireads
Upside Down by N.R. Walker

emotional informative lighthearted medium-paced

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

2.75

Ok this was definitely not a good book. One of those where I have a list a mile long of issues I had with it, but actually did enjoy reading despite all that, so decided to be generous with my rating. 

Maybe I should start by saying this is mainly a cutesy, fluffy romance. I didn't feel like it was actually aspiring to any great literary heights - it was just telling a fairly simple story in quite straightforward language. So whilst I didn't think it was super well-written, there wasn't anything in the writing style that irritated me. The content however...

Ok so the "asexual support meetings" were by far the worst bits of the whole book. As far as I could tell, they were included for two reasons: (1) as a plot device to get the two protagonists to meet each other properly, and (2) so that the author could insert a bunch of long, preachy, holier-than-thou, "educational" speeches about asexuality and how hard done by asexuals are. I could be wrong, but I couldn't find any indication online that Walker identifies on the ace spectrum at all and I got strong vibes that these scenes were just ways to show off all the research she'd done. The meetings were sort of presented like group therapy sessions for some kind of deep trauma, or like AA meetings or something? Treated with this deep, somber reverence where the person leading the meeting stand up and gives a long impassioned speech (tirade) and other attendees start crying. It was so melodramatic it was kind of hilarious. But it did feel like an irritating misrepresentation. My experience of ace meetups has been that yes ok there's space for emotional DMCs but mostly it's all about connection and building a sense of community through having some fun - drinks, museum trips, karaoke, pub quizzes, etc. and many long earnest conversations about transport trivia 😅.

I also felt like it was a bit on the nose that one of the characters first heard about asexuality from his DOCTOR. Obviously it's entirely plausible, but given the ongoing battle against pathologisation of asexuality, and the fact that in general asexuals have to educate medical professionals rather than the other way round, it just felt a little insensitive and tactless.

For someone who claimed to be really good at googling, it was baffling to me that Jordan didn't try googling asexuality. I'm assuming the only reason he didn't was so the author could engineer the Big Misunderstanding. I also felt that the resolution of that situation was dreadful - it was presented as this sweeping romantic gesture but was actually multiple layers of betrayal of confidence about extremely personal things, first from Merry to Hennessy and then Hennessey talking about it in front of the whole bloody support group. I would have been mortified and furious.

In fact I thought Jordan was generally just a really juvenile character. I'll admit I was actually quite amused by his obsession with the word 'motherfucker' but I'm not sure myself why it didn't irritate the hell out of me. And the whole 'is cereal soup?' bit was so stupid and tedious. 

What I did enjoy was the initial relationship development through 5 min conversations on the bus, eavesdropped on by a crowd of nosey but well-meaning busybodies. I would really have liked for all those characters to be fleshed out properly though, rather than just being a funny concept. I also quite enjoyed the twist at the end.

Random side point: when the flatmate is described as a painter I totally interpreted that as meaning an artist and it took me till the last 10% of the book to figure out it meant painter as in a decorator.