Alice Whitley is a fictional college sophomore and the protagonist of Claire Kann’s 2018 YA novel Let’s Talk About Love. She’s Black, biromantic, and asexual, and she loves interior design and aesthetics. She’s even created something called the Cutie Code to rate people and things; it ranges, initially, from green to red. Green encompasses things that give her warm fuzzy feelings, like puppies, and red would be an intense attraction, though Alice admits she hasn’t really used the red code.
The novel begins with Alice moving in with her best friends Feenie and Ryan, who are engaged. All three of them are excited to live together. They’re ready for a low-key summer — which they absolutely do not get. It starts with Takumi, a new coworker at Alice’s job. He’s charming and insightful, and Alice is immediately interested in him, despite her broken heart. So interested, in fact, that he breaks the Cutie Code — she’s never been attracted to someone so intensely on sight.
While this could be exciting, Alice isn’t really in the mode for romance. She’s getting over a breakup with her ex-girlfriend Margot, who left her at the end of the semester in part because of mismatched libidos. Though Alice loves cuddling and kissing, she has zero interest in sex, and Margot struggled to understand this; Alice struggles to talk about it for fear of how other people will react. If Alice pursues something with Takumi, won’t their relationship end just as poorly? Why bother thinking about a “them” if they’re doomed?
That would be enough to throw off her summer, but then there’s drama with Feenie and Ryan too. Alice’s friends are supportive, but sometimes they feel distant and closed-off too. Alice isn’t sure who she is without them, but she’s struggling to feel connected with them too, especially when she thinks about the wedding and how things will change once her friends have said “I do.” Who will Alice be to Ryan and Feenie, after the wedding? What if they start seeing each other less?
As the summer wears on, Alice’s parents throw themselves into the mix too, pressuring Alice to declare her major. They want her to go to law school like her older siblings, and Alice doesn’t know how to tell them that she wants something else—in part because she isn’t sure what that something else is. She hopes to tell them when she figures it out, but she doesn’t know how to go about deciding on a career when she’s already overwhelmed with her feelings for Takumi, the tension with Feenie, and Alice’s own fears around her sexuality.
What this means is that Alice’s summer ends up being anything but quiet. Her character arc involves significant personal growth as she learns to reconcile the various aspects of her own identity with the expectations of those around her. She grapples with questions about who she wants to be, what love means to her, and how she can maintain personal boundaries around sex while also exploring a relationship with Takumi. It’s a summer where Alice learns to use her voice — and while nothing about it is easy, she’s ready to live her life for herself.