Bi Book Club: Let’s Talk About Love

Alice Whitley, the protagonist of Claire Kann’s 2018 YA novel Let’s Talk About Love, spoke to me personally right from the start. In Chapter 1, as Alice’s girlfriend is breaking up with her, Alice admits to the reader that she’s asexual, noting: “She had also hoped she could wiggle her life around that truth like it didn’t matter or would never come up.” It was jarring in the best possible way, because I too had hoped, for years, that I could wiggle my life around conversations about my sexuality, too.

But I couldn't do that forever, and neither can Alice. Her sexuality does matter, and it is coming up — in an attempt to save the relationship, or at least understand Alice better, Margot wants to talk about Alice’s lack of interest in sex, but Alice is scared. Of her own self-acceptance, Alice tells the reader that it’s “an eighty-twenty split”. That twenty part encompassed the fact that Alice could not call herself asexual in front of another person.

She’s afraid, and that fear immediately brought me back to my own days in the closet, where I felt good, privately, about my identity but was unable to share it with anyone for the same reason: What if they don’t understand?

Let’s Talk About Love is an exploration of that question as well as its counterpart: What if they do? A college sophomore, Alice isn’t looking to ask any questions at the end of the semester. What she really wants are movie marathons, all-you-can food, and time with her best friends Feenie and Ryan — a nice, low-key summer to recover from the breakup with Margot.

What Alice gets, though, is much more complicated. It starts with a new employee at her part-time job. His name is Takumi, and he’s a few years older. More importantly, though, he’s one of the most beautiful people Alice has ever met. She’s immediately interested in him, even as she’s certain that there’s no point in trying to talk to him. Why would Takumi be any more likely than Margot to understand and accept Alice’s asexuality?

Alice’s crush on Takumi is distracting enough, but her summer really begins to spiral when she argues with Feenie and Ryan, and when her parents push her to declare her major and commit to going to law school in the future (no thanks, says Alice). All of this forces Alice to ask herself what kind of life she wants to lead, and who, exactly, she wants to be.

Though much of this novel focuses on asexuality, Alice is also biromantic. She’s interested in romance with men and women, including cuddling, hugs, and kisses, but she isn’t interested in sex with anyone. Alice’s biromantic label isn’t the cause of her angst in the novel, and so doesn’t get much page time, but it’s a critical piece of her identity.

For example, in addition to its lengthy treatment of aphobia, or bias against aromantic or asexual people, Let’s Talk About Love also touches on issues of biphobia and intersectionality. In a meeting with her therapist, Alice shares that she doesn’t feel welcome at her college’s LGBT club on account of her being bi, Black, and ace. It’s a single line in a larger conversation about community, but it’s nonetheless important. Many of my other recent reads — including Perfect on Paper (2021) and Old Enough (2023) — feature LGBT school groups that accept all sexualities, races, and genders, without discrimination. While I very much enjoyed these portrayals, and think that that’s exactly how the real world should work, I appreciate how Let’s Talk About Love addresses, even briefly, that these spaces can be complicated for different people.

For me, one of the most exciting aspects of this book was Alice’s dual labels. I myself use both bi and demi, which was a point of contention for me when I was first exploring my identity. I thought I had to choose between them, but neither label felt complete on its own. I’d had remarkably few experiences of attraction, all on people I knew well, so “demi” felt right. But I’d also had crushes on more than one gender, so “bi” felt right too. It didn’t occur to me, initially, that I could use both, and Alice’s use of multiple labels might have felt revelatory to younger me.

I’ve been on a YA kick recently, and when I picked up Let’s Talk About Love, I wasn’t sure if I should expect YA or new adult. Though the characters are, age-wise, closer to the latter, this novel is solidly YA. This is not a critique but a distinction: Unlike books with similarly aged protagonists, such as Hayley Jakobson’s Old Enough, Let’s Talk About Love feels educational at times, which gives it a younger feel. It reads as something of an introduction to asexuality (which may be a selling point for some readers, as asexual people are only an estimated 1% of the population according to AVEN, the Asexual Visibility and Education Network). The novel offers definitions and recognizes that not all experiences of asexuality are the same, which are definite strengths.

Where it didn’t work for me was the tension around Alice’s friends and parents. I won’t spoil what happens, but some of these issues were swept away easily. Much happens off the page with Takumi as well (including paragliding in Chapter 24, which I would have loved to experience with Alice!). For some readers, these omissions may make perfect sense, as Alice’s identity exploration is the main plot line, not paragliding or her parents. I get that, but I would have loved to spend a smidge more time with Alice as she navigates the complex issues in each of these relationships. The easy answers left the characters feeling, at times, very young.

Overall, though, Let's Talk About Love is a fun, quick read for anyone interested in asexuality and how this identity can interact with other identities. It addresses different types of love — including romantic, platonic, and familial — without ranking them as better or worse than one another, which is a nice touch. It’s a great reminder that love exists in many forms.