I have weird feelings about this book. But let’s start off with the review portion.
This is a story about Quinn, a high school girl with a high sex drive, and Julian, a boy with none, who go on a date on a dare. Julian’s friends want him to finally get laid because high school and Quinn’s friends want to see how long she’ll last in a relationship since she’s got a terrible reputation and people think she’s just an easy lay. What ensues is a story of teenage drama as the pair fall for one another despite their mismatch in desires, Quinn’s past coming to light, and an influx of bets on both sides.
Notable in this is that, unlike a lot of romance stories, there is a definite effort on the part of the characters to try and communicate. It’s not built on miscommunication and lies so much as on trying to figure themselves out in the context of these new situations.
And in Julian’s case, it’s his asexuality that’s causing most of his conflict. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t want the same things his friends and his girlfriend wants and he doesn’t even know how to look up what’s going on with him. It’s a relatable experience to the start of figuring out if you’re ace that really resonated in a way I haven’t had anything resonate with me before.
It wasn’t a perfect book. There’s a few parts that feel like an after school special, with dialogue that’s a little too on the nose and too… rehearsed, I suppose, to sound like it would actually be spoken by teenagers, particularly when Julian is having his inner and outer monologues about how society deals with promiscuous women compared to men. The dump of information on asexuality seemed to have been framed very specifically so that the information could get out like an article and be more informative than narrative. It works, but only barely.
However. However. It was the sort of book that would have been fantastic for me when I was trying to figure myself out. As an adult, I can see some of the thoughts and feelings I had back then reflected in Julian, and I have never read something that resonated so much with that part of my life before.
Not that it was entirely accurate. I am also female and aromantic, so there’s a disconnect. His experience was not mine, but some of it definitely was.
The unfortunate thing is that at that time, this is not the sort of thing I would have read at the time. It’s not even the normal sort of thing I would read now. Which means I’m going to have to step up my game on my own books.