Book Review: This Doesn’t Mean Anything by Sarah Whalen
Hey all, Sam here.
And finishing up my weekly bonus post Pride Month reviews, I actually have a newer fiction release to talk about. I know my other bonus review posts each Saturday have been non-fiction Ace books, but I actually also somewhat recently read an Ace rep fiction book that I had seen talked about on social media a little bit over the last couple months, and it was one that sounded intriguing enough for me to pick it up.
Obviously though, Pride is not just a one-month thing. It should be recognized all throughout the year, and I’ll try to do better about adding tags to my reviews about the sorts of representation that can be found in a lot of the books I read. As always, I’m trying to learn more and do better
Also, hey, if you know of any more books out there with Ace/Aro/Demi representation, let me know in the comments. I’m always on the lookout for books that feature characters that often share the way I feel a lot of times, because it is still a vastly underrepresented identity.
All right, let’s jump into this review.
My Thoughts
Spencer’s first semester at Ravens College is going surprisingly well. For starters, she actually likes her roommate and soon finds herself settling into a routine of eating all her meals with the same two people, studying in the library with Nick – an upperclassman she finds only a little insufferable, and hanging out at the local coffee shop.
Her new environment also means she’s trying new things – like Tinder dating. But Spencer can’t figure out why the idea of sex makes her want to run for the hills. That is, until she comes across the word “asexual,” and for the first time, she doesn’t feel so alone.
As Spencer and Nick begin to spend more time together, she realizes she doesn’t feel any panic or revulsion when they touch, and wonders if that means there’s hope for a fulfilling, loving relationship without sex.
But despite reciprocating her feelings, Nick has reservations of his own, leaving Spencer to wonder if the risk is worth it.
Rating: 3 stars
I wanted to love this book, and there were parts I can say that I did love…but for the most part, this book did not work for me. And honestly, I’m pretty sad about that.
This book is 463 pages, probably around 270 once you add in the additional reading, playlist, and acknowledgments pages…and it could have been a much better book if like 150 pages of it was cut out. It felt like a lot of the scenes and chapters did very little to progress the story or deepen our understanding of the main characters.
The first half of the book was Spencer and Nick at the library studying, Spencer and Nick at the coffee shop, or Spencer and Nick (sometimes with Reese and Hunt, or sometimes with Joselyn and Christian) having a movie night. It was all very repetitive and redundant, and if at least half of these scenes had been eliminated, the story would have held a lot more interest for me when it comes to the characters.
Oh, and Nick was also like majorly focused on the fact that he’s 21 and Spencer’s only 18, and kept going on about how it was wrong for them to do anything together because he’s “so much older” and “it would be wrong.” It isn’t that big of an age gap; everyone in the book is an adult. It was just a weird and over-the-top obsessive focus on that detail.
And speaking of…pretty much every character was very similar in that they were all pretty terrible to each other. A vast majority of the time I didn’t even understand how these people were supposed to be friends. They are always snapping at each other and cussing at each other and getting into arguments with each other for mostly stupid reasons.
About the only aspect of characterization that I did like was that a lot of Spencer’s experience with coming to terms with her asexuality felt very real and recognizable and relatable to me, although I am not as sex-repulsed as she is. And I also liked that Nick did reassure Spencer several times that there was nothing wrong with her, that she wasn’t broken because of her feelings towards touching and sex, and that he wasn’t going to pressure her into anything she was uncomfortable with.
However, that being said, pretty much all of the male characters were the same in that they were annoyingly overprotective about the female characters. They couldn’t go anywhere without male supervision, and if the ladies tried to speak up against it, the dudes would get angry and shut them down as if their views and opinions didn’t matter and of course the dudes were right about protecting them and taking care of them and not leaving them alone.
There were even times when the female characters would be at one of their dorms or apartments or whatever and they would just call or text one of the guys to come over because it just wasn’t safe for them to be without a man around. It was too much and too frequent.
I honestly thought about giving up on this book several times, but I had seen so many glowing reviews about it, that I hoped it would get better…and yet it did not.
The reason it’s getting 3 stars instead of 2 is because I thought it did have good Ace representation in it. I’ve never really been much for touching and hugging and all of that, and only accept it from certain people, and that felt very accurate to me. And while I’m not sex repulsed like Spencer is, my experience is that I have only felt that attraction, that desire, those feelings and sensations one time in my life, with one person. So, to me, it was nice to have the representation that resonated as similar. I say similar because asexuality is indeed a spectrum and we don’t all have the same feelings and experiences. But whether the experience is perfectly shared or not, it did ring as true for me.
I just wish the rest of the story had worked for me as well.
Well that’s all from me for now. Thank you so much for stopping by and I’ll be back soon (as in later today with another book review) with more geeky content.
