Book Review – Let’s Talk About Love

Yesterday I finished Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann. This is a YA contemporary romance featuring a biromantic asexual black college student, Alice. While working at the library, Alice meets Takumi who is so cute he breaks her Cutie Scale. The book follows Alice as she gets to know Takumi and explores what that means.

First off, the rep in this is great. Good discussions on race from both Alice and Takumi who is Japanese especially in discussing stereotypes and what people ask or expect of them as a result. The ace representation is such a nice change of pace, I’ve never read about an ace character before. Some people don’t like the rep and others love it, I can’t really speak to it myself. I assume it’s like everything and it represents one facet of the ace experience but of course can’t cover everyone. I will say that I was very nervous in the beginning and thought Alice thinking Takumi was cute cute was going to dissolve into her no longer being ace but rest assured, this isn’t that book.

Alice and Takumi’s relationship was adorable and fun to read. It’s really innocent and they consider themselves friends for most of the book. Watching them get to know each other and spend time together was really fun, I flew through those chapters and they were great.

Another part I really enjoyed was Alice’s exploration of her feelings. She began to see a therapist and did some internal searching. This was a nice insight into her life and thoughts, I wish there was more of it. Some of this was dedicated to her trying to figure out her major and reject the life her parents thought she should have. I honestly could have done without that part, it was not needed in the story at all and just slowed down the plot. The book was also all told from Alice’s perspective but in third person and her thoughts were then in parentheses, this was a weird choice and a little distracting. Just use first person and stop trying to be creative with writing style, it makes it hard to read.

Now for the bad, I HATED her friends with a passion. Alice is living with Feenie and Ryan, her two best friends from high school who are now engaged. Feenie and Ryan are horrible selfish, self-centered, controlling people. Especially Feenie, get mad at Alice to the point of not speaking to her for the stupidest reason (no spoilers) that had me so confused and mad at how absurd it was. Ryan on his own wasn’t my favorite but not terrible when he wasn’t been influenced by Feenie. Feenie may rank among my least favorite characters ever, I wanted to throw the book away every time she opened her mouth. The worst part of this was that Alice was so devoted to them and convinced she needed to make up with them, I’m still not over it but ending this rant.

Overall, I gave this book 3 stars because I really did enjoy it overall. But oh man, I give Feenie 0 stars if we’re rating storylines separately.