A review by jenyakohnson
Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao

emotional hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

i saw this book promoted on twitter by some my favorite authors and i was drawn to the beautiful cover. after reading the description, two aroace people at a historically women’s university with rivaling romance centric advice blogs, i knew i had to get my hands on it once it was released. 

this new adult coming of age novel is centered around friendship and coming into your identity which are two topics i always love reading about but don’t see enough of. the fact that the two main characters, sophie and jo, are both queer (specifically aroace) made it more interesting bc i got to see how relationship dynamics differ between allosexual people and aspec people. i found myself constantly thinking about how society views familial, romantic, and platonic relationships and how, in many instances, our expectations for these relationships don’t align with queer identities. for example, many allosexual people prioritize their romantic relationships over their platonic ones which can be isolating for aspec people. this was a huge theme and a fear expressed by both of our main characters, but it was more prevalent with jo. 

both jo and sophie stated that they never met another aroace person before. their relationship allowed them to find comfort in their shared experiences / fears like uncertainty in their identity, being told they’re not queer, unaccepting family, and being ignored when their friends got into romantic relationships.

 

although the story and message was beautiful, i wasn’t a huge fan of the writing. the voice for sophie and jo were extremely similar despite the fact that they’re supposed to be polar opposites which made it a bit confusing to know who’s pov i was in sometimes. a lot of the scenes felt very rushed as well. scenes that i wish were really wrapped up kinda quickly (it would be an emotional scene and it would wrap up like “and then we talked about being a spec, and romance, and this and that for about an hour). that between the time jumps made me feel like the friendship between jo and sophie (although beautiful) escalated really fast. 

overall i really liked the book. jo and sophie spend a good portion of the book not knowing what a future looks like without a romantic partner, but they chose to find a community of aspec people to navigate life’s uncertainties together. they realized that just bc they’re aroace and society says you will not be fulfilled without a romantic relationship, they don’t have to be alone and without love in other forms.