Since this week is #AceAwarenessWeek, and today’s blogtober prompt is “Book review”, I wanted to review a book with asexual representation. I’ll warn you ahead of time: I wasn’t the biggest fan of this book. But I think it’s important to be honest on my blog and not only share glowing reviews. I also think this book might still be something you’ll enjoy, especially if you’re looking for more asexual books to read.
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS
Zora Novak has been framed.
When someone burns down the home of the school janitor and he dies in the blaze, everyone in Addamsville, Indiana, points a finger at Zora. Never mind that Zora has been on the straight and narrow since her father was thrown in jail. With everyone looking for evidence against her, her only choice is to uncover the identity of the real killer. There’s one big problem—Zora has no leads. No one does. Addamsville has a history of tragedy, and thirty years ago a similar string of fires left several townspeople dead. The arsonist was never caught.
Now, Zora must team up with her cousin Artemis—an annoying self-proclaimed Addamsville historian—to clear her name. But with a popular ghost-hunting television show riling up the townspeople, almost no support from her family and friends, and rumors spinning out of control, things aren’t looking good. Zora will have to read between the lines of Addamsville’s ghost stories before she becomes one herself.
Rep: asexual MC with prosthetic fingers, wlw side character
CWs: fire, death of a parent, incarceration of a parent
I’d been highly anticipating this release, but I feel sorely disappointed. Not because this is an objectively bad book, because it isn’t, and you might enjoy it a lot more than I did, but because I personally really didn’t enjoy it. Honestly, I think the main problem was that my expectations were just too high, and I was expecting the wrong things from this book.
I found the world building and the plot to be very vague and confusing, and I was unable to make any sense of where the story was going and why, and what exactly the setting was. Which sure makes it difficult to enjoy a book.
Based on the title and synopsis, I was expecting a fun, quirky type of ghost story, a bit like (random example) the movie Dark Shadows, but the tone of this was much more serious, which threw me off pretty early on, and the writing style didn’t work for me at all.
One reason why I was so looking forward to this release was the ace rep. And while I love casual rep, and think it’s very needed, the MC’s asexuality was literally only mentioned once, in passing, and I just found that a little disappointing, because it barely felt like rep at all. Maybe (hopefully!) other people will appreciate it for precisely this reason, but it’s not the kind of representation I’m looking for. So all in all, this book just really wasn’t for me.
Do you have recommendations for books with asexual rep?
Anniek's Library 
I hadn’t heard about this book until the other day. I was excited because I had enjoyed another book by Zappia, and this one did seem like a campy fun book in a sense. However, I was surprised to see that it was as serious as you said, and confusing/vauge world building is never fun. I might have to rethink going for this one. Wonderful review! 🙂
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Thank you! I definitely expected campy, so I really don’t know what this was supposed to be😅
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