#AceAwarenessWeek: 20 Asexual Recommendations

It’s #AceAwarenessWeek, which means the asexual community is trying to raise awareness for, well, the fact that we exist, because a lot of the time, people have never heard of asexuality or try to deny it’s a real orientation. Being aroace (AKA aromantic & asexual), it’s very important to me to spread awareness of what asexuality is and isn’t, since there are a lot of common misconceptions.

And of course, one of the best ways to learn new things and understand other people is reading! So I’m sharing no less than 20 recommendations for asexual and aspec books! I mainly hope this will help other asexual people, because we rarely get to see ourselves represented. By the way, I believe most, if not all, of these are Own Voices for the rep!

You can find even more recommendations in this post that I wrote during Pride month.

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READ

Akemi Dawn Bowman – Summer Bird Blue

One of my favourite books with aroace rep that I really saw myself in, is Summer Bird Blue. It’s about a questioning aroace main character who loses her sister in a car accident. I’m very close to my own sister, so in that sense it was a really difficult book to read, as I can’t imagine how painful it must be to lose someone you love so much. And on top of that, the representation was intensely relatable as well.

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A. Alex Logan – Royal Rescue

Royal Rescue is another favourite book with an aroace main character. The premisse is fantastic: it’s a fantasy novel set in a world where all the princes and princesses get paired up when they come of age. They go about this by asking each person to choose if they want to be a rescuer or if they want to be put in a tower to be rescued (Rapunzel style). When asked if he wants to be rescued or to be a rescuer, our main character is like: no. It’s such a fun story, and I found it really relatable. It also features a QPR (queer-platonic relationship)!

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Lana Wood Johnson – Technically, You Started It

If you’d rather read a more light-hearted contemporary, I would very much recommend Technically, You Started It. The story is told entirely through text messages between the demisexual main character and the bisexual love interest, which makes for a really fun format, and I thought it worked really well.

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Seanan McGuire – Every Heart a Doorway

The Wayward Children series is one of my absolute favourite series, and the first installment, Every Heart a Doorway, has an asexual main character. These books are all portal fantasies about what happens to the children who go through magical portals (think Narnia and Alice in Wonderland) once they’ve returned home. The series consists entirely of novellas, so they’re all very fast reads as well!

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C.B. Lee – Not Your Backup

Please note Not Your Backup is the third installment in an ongoing superhero series. Every installment centers a different main character, and this one centers Emma, who’s questioning her sexual and romantic orientation and figuring out she’s aroace. This book has some very valuable discussions on what asexuality and aromanticism are and how relationships are what we want them to be. This book features a QPR as well!

You can read my full review here!

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Marieke Nijkamp – Before I Let Go

Before I Let Go is a quiet, eerie thriller about Corey, who travels back to her hometown in Alaska after her best friend dies under mysterious circumstances. Ultimately, this book is about the way people sometimes tend to romanticize mental illness, and how dehumanizing that is. Corey, the main character, is asexual, and her best friend who passed away was pansexual.

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Shelby Eileen – Goddess of the Hunt

How could I write this post and not recommend my favourite poetry collection? Goddess of the Hunt is about an aroace Artemis, and not only did these poems make me feel so seen, they’re beautifully written as well.

You can read my full review here!

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Claire Legrand – Sawkill Girls

If you’re a horror fan, I’d recommend Sawkill Girls, which is a multi-POV story about girls who have to defeat a monster. One of the main characters is asexual. This book turned out to be a little too weird for me, but I’m sure many of you will enjoy it!

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Francesca Zappia – Now Entering Addamsville

Now Entering Addamsville is about a town where ghosts are real, and a girl who can see them. I personally wasn’t the biggest fan of this book, but it’s definitely a great one to check out if you’re looking for more casual asexual rep.

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Mackenzie Lee – The Lady’s Guide to Piracy and Petticoats

The Lady’s Guide to Piracy and Petticoats is one of the first (maybe the very first) books I’ve read with aroace rep, so it’s pretty special to me because of that. It’s also a very fun read. I would recommend you read the first installment, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, first though!

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ON MY TBR

Lisa Jenn Bigelow – Hazel’s Theory of Evolution

A middlegrade with a questioning asexual main character? Hazel’s Theory of Evolution is one of my most anticipated reads of the year for a reason. For me, reading LGBTQ+ middlegrade is such a healing experience, as it helps me understand the ways in which I *could* have noticed I was queer when I was younger. Having only realized I’m queer halfway through my 20s, I’m trying to understand myself more in hindsight, and middlegrade really helps with that. This author’s previous book, Drum Roll, Please, was an amazing reading experience for me, so I have high hopes for this one as well!

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TJ Klune – Heartsong

The third installment in an ongoing paranormal series, Heartsong is the book I’m currently looking forward the most. Each book in this series centers another main character, and this one will have more prominent asexual rep. I don’t think the asexual character is the main character, but I’m not actually sure yet, and I do know he has a major role in this book either way. This series is quickly becoming one of my favourites, so I’d very much recommend it!

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Rosiee Thor – Tarnished Are the Stars

October is really blessing asexuals everywhere, because not only did the previous two books come out this month, but this one and the next are released in October as well! Tarnished Are the Stars has an aroace main character, and I’ve heard the best things about this steampunk-y sci-fi book!

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Beyond the Black Door

How many books do you know that feature asexuality in the synopsis? I know right, not a lot. But this one did, and I love it! Beyond the Black Door sounds like a great dark fantasy, and I can’t wait to read it!

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Alice Oseman – Loveless

Of course I couldn’t write this post without including my number 1 most anticipated release of 2020 by my number 1 favourite YA contemporary author. Loveless is about a main character figuring out and learning to accept that she’s aroace. It’s an own voices story, and Alice Oseman’s stories have been so relatable to me even when they weren’t entirely about my own experiences, so I can only imagine how much this will mean to me.

This book is set to come out in April 2020!

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RoAnna Sylver – Chameleon Moon

Whenever someone on Twitter asks for diverse recommendations, someone is bound to recommend Chameleon Moon, so I’ve seen it mentioned a lot by now, and I really want to read it! I believe it not only has an asexual main character, but an autistic one as well (I’m not 100% sure, as I haven’t read it), so it sounds like this could be really relatable for me!

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Lillian Clark – Immoral Code

A book where a main character being aroace is mentioned in the synopsis! I’ve heard absolutely amazing things about the rep in Immoral Code, so I really can’t wait to read it. It’s been on my physical TBR for way too long, so maybe I’ll even pick it up this week!

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Claudie Arseneault – Baker Thief

Another book I’ve seen recommended on Twitter a lot is Baker Thief. I believe this book has a bigender and aromantic main character, as well as a demisexual one. I’m very curious to eventually read it!

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Emily Skrutskie – Hullmetal Girls

I’ve heard so many great things about Emily Skrutskie’s books, but I still haven’t read any of them. I really want to, and I’ll probably start with Hullmetal Girls, which I believe has an aroace main character as one of the MCs.

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Belle Révolte

By revealing one of the main characters is asexual, Linsey Miller instantly made Belle Révolte into one of my most anticipated releases of 2020. It’s just that simple sometimes. I was hoping to get a review copy of this book, but I haven’t had any luck yet, so fingers crossed!

This book is set to come out in February 2020!

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Do you know of any other books with asexual/aspec representation?

If you order books through the links in this post, I’ll make a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps me review more books and host more giveaways, so I’d be very grateful if you used it!

 

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