Claire Kann

Striking a perfect balance between heartfelt emotions and spot-on humor, this debut features a pop-culture enthusiast protagonist with an unforgettable voice sure to resonate with readers. Alice had her whole summer planned. Nonstop all-you-can-eat buffets while marathoning her favorite TV shows (best friends totally included) with the smallest dash of adulting—working at the library to pay her share of the rent. The only thing missing from her perfect plan? Her girlfriend (who ended things when Alice confessed she's asexual). Alice is done with dating—no thank you, do not pass go, stick a fork in her, done. But then Alice meets Takumi and she can’t stop thinking about him or the rom com-grade romance feels she did not ask for (uncertainty, butterflies, and swoons, oh my!). When her blissful summer takes an unexpected turn and Takumi becomes her knight with a shiny library-employee badge (close enough), Alice has to decide if she’s willing to risk their friendship for a love that might not be reciprocated—or understood. Claire Kann’s debut novel Let’s Talk About Love, chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, gracefully explores the struggle with emerging adulthood and the complicated line between friendship and what it might mean to be something more. Praise for Let’s Talk About Love from the Swoon Reads community: “A sweet and beautiful journey about self-discovery and identity!” —Macy Filia, reader on SwoonReads.com “There aren't many novels that have asexual characters and it's something people need more of.” —Alice, reader on SwoonReads.com “I want this on my shelf where I can admire it every day.” —Kiara, reader on SwoonReads.com

Let's Talk About Love

Jasmin 

Megan

“Let’s Talk About Love” by Claire Kann tells a story of college-aged student Alice as she endeavors everything that life has to offer her. Throughout the novel, Alice struggles with friendships, romances, and even future career plans. “Let’s Talk About Love” is easily one of most realistic books I’ve ever read. The timeline and characters all flow nicely together. While reading, it felt like I was there with the characters, experiencing everything as they did. I would consider this book to be a nice escape from my own reality, not something intensely exciting or mind-blowing, but a nice distraction from real life.

READ MY FULL REVIEW AT ABOUT MAGAZINE: http://about-online.com/books/book-re...

In this young adult novel, Alice, afraid of explaining her asexuality, has given up on finding love until love finds her.

Sarah Sammis

Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann is about Alice. She's recently broken up with her girl friend and moved in with her two best-friends (who are now a couple). She works at a library and is avoiding telling her parents that she doesn't want to be a lawyer. She's asexual, bi-romantic, and lives in the Bay Area. She's also one of my all time favorite YA protagonists.

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2018/comm...

Geoffrey Froggatt

Points for intersectional representation. I feel like this book did great things for asexual and biromantic representation. It told a simple story and explored different themes of love, sexuality and friendship. The only negative I can think of is that the fandom references were sometimes cringey. I think that this book was simply written for a different demographic. I’m not much of a romance reader, and horror is my main genre. My rating only reflects my personal enjoyment of the book rather than quality of the story itself. This book wasn’t written for my type of audience, and I still would recommend it to certain types of people.

I  first read this in April 2018, so this reread is a little over 5 years later. I am a different person than I was before, and so definitely a different reader. That's one way to (not) say that I'm not as big a fan of Let's Talk About Love as I was at 24.

To start off, I'm not a fan of the people Alice surrounds herself with as I was 5 years ago. I don't like Takumi, though I don't think I dislike him. I hate the Feenie-Alice conflict and resolution, I don't think Alice deserved it and should have taken on as much of the blame she did. Ryan is fine but he's barely there. I listened to the audiobook this round so it's possible that played a role in the disconnect, but I wouldn't say it's the sole reason.

I do still connect with Alice's "asexual disphoria", as I've grown to call it. As a trans person, I understand the disconnect between gender and body/etc. And, as an ace person, I understand the confusion of suddenly experiencing arousal or attraction when you've grown so comfortable in your asexuality. I don't know if I missed it, but I didn't really pick up on Alice's resolution with this particular plot point? It seemed to me that the boy came and saved the day, when he told her he understood. But did she come to that herself at any point? Again, I might have missed it, being an audiobook (audiobooks are usually good, I just think I'm in an audio funk).

But this is still largely a romance book, I think, which I'm still just not a fan of lol So I'm sure that plays a role in my rating from 5 stars 5 years ago to 3.5 now. The half, I think, is for the person I was before who needed to read about another asexual, messy, kind of lost young adult.

Ari Rose

I  first read this in April 2018, so this reread is a little over 5 years later. I am a different person than I was before, and so definitely a different reader. That's one way to (not) say that I'm not as big a fan of Let's Talk About Love as I was at 24.

To start off, I'm not a fan of the people Alice surrounds herself with as I was 5 years ago. I don't like Takumi, though I don't think I dislike him. I hate the Feenie-Alice conflict and resolution, I don't think Alice deserved it and should have taken on as much of the blame she did. Ryan is fine but he's barely there. I listened to the audiobook this round so it's possible that played a role in the disconnect, but I wouldn't say it's the sole reason.

I do still connect with Alice's "asexual disphoria", as I've grown to call it. As a trans person, I understand the disconnect between gender and body/etc. And, as an ace person, I understand the confusion of suddenly experiencing arousal or attraction when you've grown so comfortable in your asexuality. I don't know if I missed it, but I didn't really pick up on Alice's resolution with this particular plot point? It seemed to me that the boy came and saved the day, when he told her he understood. But did she come to that herself at any point? Again, I might have missed it, being an audiobook (audiobooks are usually good, I just think I'm in an audio funk).

But this is still largely a romance book, I think, which I'm still just not a fan of lol So I'm sure that plays a role in my rating from 5 stars 5 years ago to 3.5 now. The half, I think, is for the person I was before who needed to read about another asexual, messy, kind of lost young adult.

Striking a perfect balance between heartfelt emotions and spot-on humor, this YA debut features a pop-culture enthusiast protagonist with an unforgettable voice sure to resonate with readers. Alice had her whole summer planned. Nonstop all-you-can-eat buffets while marathoning her favorite TV shows (best friends totally included) with the smallest dash of adulting—working at the library to pay her share of the rent. The only thing missing from her perfect plan? Her girlfriend (who ended things when Alice confessed she's asexual). Alice is done with dating—no thank you, do not pass go, stick a fork in her, done. But then Alice meets Takumi and she can’t stop thinking about him or the rom com-grade romance feels she did not ask for (uncertainty, butterflies, and swoons, oh my!). When her blissful summer takes an unexpected turn and Takumi becomes her knight with a shiny library-employee badge (close enough), Alice has to decide if she’s willing to risk their friendship for a love that might not be reciprocated—or understood. Claire Kann’s young adult debut novel Let’s Talk About Love, chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, gracefully explores the struggle with emerging adulthood and the complicated line between friendship and what it might mean to be something more. Praise for Let's Talk About Love: "Alice is black, biromantic, and asexual, and her relationship with Takumi is genuine and fun. . . . A light, enjoyable asexual romance with outstanding representation. Recommended." —School Library Journal "Debut novelist Kann thoughtfully tackles what it means to be asexual and gives Alice a platform to discover who she is and what it means for her relationship with Takumi. Asexual readers will appreciate the visibility, and those—like Alice’s ex—who know poorly understand it, will gain a better sense of what love without sex can look like." —Publishers Weekly

Katherine Yang

With the still-vastly untapped opportunities to create stories in (young adult) fiction that represent experiences of biromanticism, asexuality, Blackness, and their intersections, this book broadcasted admirable and exciting intentions but just… didn’t push very far. For one, the problems the characters encounter feel like the bare minimum of the issues the author is trying to tackle, and for another, the way the characters respond emotionally to the problem—whether by ignoring it, getting mad and petty about it, breaking down about it (a short awkward meeting with a supposedly mindblowingly cute person results in a full-on can't-speak-crying breakdown)—comes off as childish and simplistic. Stars for commendable effort and some representation, but with the cutesy dialogue, lack of genuine development, and bland characters (literally, “Perfect Takumi”), I felt like I couldn't find much to care about in this book.

Anna Ureta

Finally a book about Asexuals.
I feel represented <3

This was so adorable. 
I would have loved it more if she wasn't like a decade younger than me but I still totally related to her nerdiness and all the struggles the MC went through. 

Really enjoyed this one :)

brianna

"People want to believe in magic, because when things seem terrible, magic and miracles give them hope. They want to believe something is working in their favor behind the scenes. Something good."
 

original rating: 3.75 stars.
updated rating: 4 stars.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to! I had some very minor problems with the conversation of asexuality but it was very.... informative. On the bright side, Takumi literally owned my entire heart I have feelings for him y'all. I'm disappointed with the lack of discussion about Alice being biromantic though. It was only focused on her being asexual which is important because that is usually never shown in books but like !!! her being biromantic is also a huge thing and I wish that had gotten more attention. Either way, it was a cute contemporary and I managed to read it in one sitting which I've missed. I'm excited to see what Claire Kann comes out with in the future.

Claire

3.5 (I rounded up). There were some parts I didn't enjoy as much but reading an asexual main character is something I needed so dearly.

Naga

this book speaks to me on another level.

see, i usually hate reading books in which the character sounds like me, or i can relate to the story. because it makes me over analyzing. it makes me think. i hate it when i think.

BUT. this book is an exception. so even though i still think while reading this book, i don't hate it. because it helps me to understand myself. as a bisexual minus the sexual (aka yes, biromantic ace) myself, like Alice, i do have questions about things too. and thanks to her, now i sort of... have new enlightenment.

thank you for writing this, Claire Kann.

(definitely regret picking it up two years ago and only able to continue it now. i should've finished it sooner!)

illa

can't believe I just read the best romance book sorry I take no criticism
healthy and loving relationship!! discussion on being asexual!!! biromantic representation!! 
all around a fun, pleasant, feel-good book.

Inga Kühn 

Zuallererst ist das Buch sehr leicht zu lesen, es ist einfach geschrieben und die Story ist einfach zu verfolgen.
Die Charaktere erscheinen zeitweise wie Karikaturen einer Persönlichkeit. Damit ist eine Ansammlung von Klischees gemeint, auf die der Name einer Person geklebt wird. Es erscheint manchmal also etwas erzwungen, wie sich die Personen verhalten. Fairerweise muss ich auch zugeben, dass es einige Stellen gab, an denen ich mir aber auch dachte, dass das jetzt typisch war für die Person. Daher ist dies ein zweischneidiges Schwert.
Dadurch, dass es sehr wenig Representation für asexuelle Menschen in der Buchwelt gibt, hatte ich sehr hohe Erwartungen an dieses Buch. Das ist natürlich sehr schwer, da es fast unmöglich ist, das gesamte Spektrum ordentlich in einem Buch zu vertreten. Man sollte im Kopf behalten, dass es keine Representation für das gesamte Spektrum sein KANN und dass das auch ok ist.
Mit der fraglos sehr frustrierenden Hauptperson konnte ich mich durch unterschiedliche Gründe gut identifizieren, weshalb ich auch sehr glücklich war, am Ende des Buches eine Entwicklung in ihr zu sehen zu können.

Beim Lesen dieses Buches muss man sich auf unfassbar frustrierende Kommunikationsprobleme gefasst machen, bei denen man am liebsten einfach die Charaktere mit einem Backstein boxen würde, damit sie endlich miteinander reden!

Vera Sokolyanskaya

I didn't think I would like this book this much but it turned out to be exactly the book I needed this weekend - it was light and fluffy, equally adorable and educational. I loved pop culture references in the book, especially a cat named after Buffy the vampire slayer villain (Glorificus).

Grace O'Callaghan

*3.5

‘Let’s Talk About Love’ is about Alice who’s girlfriend just broke up with her because she’s asexual. Now Alice has sworn of dating for good in fear of another situation like this. But when she meets Takumi at the library she works at she starts to question whether she could open up her heart again.

This was such a wholesome and fluffy book. If you’re looking for something dorky and cute this is definitely it. I only gave it 3.5 stars because I don’t think I was really in the mood for it. I also had some problems with it which I’ll get into. 

Alice was a wonderful protagonist. She adores Pinterest and decorating and loves food and fandom. Just so relatable in my opinion. She’s dramatic and extra, in both good and bad ways. She’s a really realistic protagonist as she’s flawed. She’s selfish at times and has a hard time figuring out her feelings but she has a really good arc trying to improve upon herself.

Takumi on the other hand was... fine. I say fine because he was so sweet and adorable, but he was just perfect. Ridiculously perfect. Too perfect. He actually has no flaws whatsoever. He’s good looking, caring, considerate, a good uncle, a good photographer, plays the guitar etc. You get the idea. Alice even says ‘You’re way too perfect for my liking.’ Need I say more? Yes. Perhaps I’m just being cynical, but no one is that perfect.

Together, Alice and Takumi have a really adorkable relationship. They are just so comfortable and completely themselves around each other. While it was a bit of insta-attraction, their relationship is still a slow burn that builds beautifully.

Also really enjoyed Feenie and Ryan. They did fight at times but were ultimately all great friends. They just all love each other so much and aren’t afraid to say so.

If I’m honest, there was hardly any plot. It is a very romance heavy book and while I love romance, I thought it was a little too much. I would’ve loved to see more from Alice’s parents and their relationship with her. I felt like we got snippets but not the whole picture. Also considering Takumi and Alice met at work (the library) they weren’t there a whole lot. Would’ve love to see more books, but when do I not.

There was another thing that was pretty frustrating to me. For the most part the writing was good (except for the amount of brackets). It actually pulled me out of the story and had me rolling my eyes at times. (The brackets were just at random points that didn’t make sense to me, like this one right here).

I loved all the topics that this book talked about. Alice goes to a therapist which was really nice to see. She didn’t have some mental illness that affected her day to day life, she just needed to sort a few things out by talking to someone. It also spoke about topics like race, parental expectations and, obviously, asexuality. The author herself isn’t asexual but to me she seemed to have done her research.

All in all a wonderful book full of fluff and feels. Not usually the type of book I’d read but good if you’re looking for biromantic and/or asexual rep. I think it’s in the YA genre but it’s more new adult I think. Alice is college age so if you’re looking for that, this book has it.

Jimena Vázquez Oliver

Me bursting into tears because a character described themselves as “biromantic asexual” is a prime example of why representation matters. Honestly, I’ve never felt so seen and understood and valid my whole entire life.

Kendra Jones

TWs: acephobia, microaggressions and racism, sexual harassment
This book has my heart

Luna

to sum: “it’s totally valid to be asexual but if that asexuality means you don’t actually want to have sex then you’re a shitty person.”

this representation is so unbelievably problematic (aside from all the other problems with the MC being ignorant, rude, and annoying) and genuinely harmful that i pray no ace person ever picks this up again, and non-ace booktubers would stop recommending it. a book cannot have good ace representation if the books itself is acephobic. it just doesn’t work like that. 

this seriously HURT to read. i’m still shaking and my heart is racing because i just don’t understand how telling people they’re wrong and abnormal is seen as good representation or even own voices. please don’t read this. don’t recommend this. listen to ace reviewers about THEIR own representation. it’s extremely invalidating and has absolutely no place as an lgbtq+ book. leave that for own voices authors who don’t look down upon the identity they’re writing about. i know it sucks because this is literally the *one* popular book for this rep, but if you’re looking to educate yourself or especially if you want to feel validated in your feelings and identity, you’re better off not reading this. 

this definitely reads like one of those gay people need to be “fixed” stories, and it’s not okay. it sounds like a great coming of age story in the synopsis, and the character makes some great points in the beginning, but that just draws you in to be hurt even more when she switches it up and acts like ace people are an abomination, and that SHE’S not even ace in the first place. the story (and the arc of her sexuality) just doesn’t make any sense, and it perpetrates the very harmful stereotypes that the MC didn’t like in the beginning. taking a character’s entire identity and throwing it away for a boy when the whole point of the identity was that it CAN’T just be ignored for someone ... it’s just disgusting. someone’s sexuality is not your plot device and it is not something that needs to magically go away to get a happy ending.

Sam Pulliam

4.5!

Full review here:

https://dearbookshelves.wordpress.com...

Katie

I received this book for free in a Goodreads giveaway; all thoughts and opinions are my own.

3.5

There were some parts of this book that were absolutely incredible, and then some other parts that were just kind of meh for me, so a 3.5 is about where I've landed. Unfortunately, I wanted to love this book way more than I did.

Starting with the good, the descriptions of Alice's asexuality are, from what I know of it, spot on. I've never read any book with an ace protagonist and although I cannot speak from personal experience, everything that I've read tells me that the rep is A+. I also enjoyed reading a book that wasn't about a character coming to terms with their sexuality--Alice figured it out long ago--but just living her life, going about her business. Coming out stories are important, but I don't think they should be the only stories that are told, and I'm glad I read this little slice of life narrative about an ace woman.

The development of Alice and Takumi's relationship was really sweet and gave me so many feels! I like Alice and Takumi as characters individually and I loved their dynamic together. Honestly, the kind of rapport they have is what dreams are made of, relationship-wise.

ALSO COLLEGE AGED PROTAGONIST. I LOVE THIS IN YA. okay I'm done yelling.

Most of what I didn't like about this book boils down to this: I wanted more. Alice's two best friends and her family are supposed to be really important to her, but they aren't talked about a lot. When they are, it's a lot of telling and not showing. I was told that her friend Feenie is a total badass who barely graduated high school because she got into so many fights, but I never saw anything more than a caricature of a badass in Feenie's scenes. A lot of the plot seemed to jump ahead several weeks or even a month between chapters, and that left me feeling a bit disoriented. This book is only 300 pages, so Alice's relationships with her friends and family could have easily been fleshed out in another 50-100 pages, and I feel like the timeline would have naturally been more filled in.

There are also a few moments of shiningly beautiful prose, and then the book lapses back into your standard YA contemporary fare. It is never poorly written, but it is only sometimes exciting. I know Claire Kann is capable of writing fun prose, so girl, DO IT. There are also some loose ends, plot-wise, that I think should have been wrapped up.

Overall, this was a solid, quick read, and I do feel like the good outweighed the bad. It's worth picking up if the plot interests you. Maybe those loose ends I mentioned earlier will lead to a sequel, which I would not be mad about at all. I will pick up more of Claire Kann's works in the future.

I hated the first half and loved the second

Alexis 

So the more i think about this book the less i like it. i thought that the main character would be more confident in herself and her sexuality. I liked the idea but honestly just fell flat for me.

Ana Ignat

I went into this looking for something fun and easy to read with some cute-ness and it's exactly what I got!!! I really enjoyed this even though I also had slight issues with it.  so i think i'm going to give this a 3.5 stars. It doesn't feel like a 4 stars but I also enjoyed it more than a 3 star book (if that makes any sense at all lmao). 

The writing itself was really easy to read and quick to get through but also I felt like the third person mixed in with Alices thoughts (in parentheses) was a bit awkward. 

The pacing of the book felt kinda off? idk exactly how to explain it but I felt a bit confused, especially bc I feel like it jumped ahead in time about 3/4 through the book and I didn't even realize. I wish we saw more of Alice and Takumi's relationship becoming what it is bc boom suddenly they spend every waking moment together and did all these cool things together. 

I loved Alice and Takumi I thought they were pretty cute even though I found some of it a bit cringe/in sta love-y / tropey but like I went in looking for cheesiness and i got it so I can't complain. I loved the fact that Alice and Takumi work in the library like the vibes were excellent and made me want to go to my local library and find a cute boy😞

I'm not asexual so I can't really speak upon the accuracy of the ace rep, but I definitely learned a lot about asexuality and I really liked all the passages about it.

Andrea M

Lacey

Read this for the Dragons and Tea Book Club and I enjoyed seeing the asexual representation.

Let's Talk About Love

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