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So at the beginning this book made me feel defensive and I almost stopped reading when she was like "First let's define being allosexual!" and starts going on about how allos just SEE SOMEONE like AT A BAR and they want to have sex with them!!! So weird!!! In a lot of ace discourse I've seen a lot of weird assumptions made about the indiscriminate horniness of allos, when having lower sex drives, responsive sex drives, not feeling sexual attraction until you get to know someone, not wanting sex outside a loving relationship, etc. Have always been part of the normal allo continuum.. There just is a huge range of sexual variation that's normal, and I think making assumptions about what it means to be allo to prove your aceness is problematic. But, she kind of addresses the fact that the same feelings might lead one person to ID as ace and another to ID as allo and there's probably a reason each of these people gravitate towards their respective label and that gravitation means something in itself... To which I say, ok, that's fair.

I thought a lot of her analysis was really interesting, and I loved reading about all the different ace experiences from her interviews. My partner is ace but they came to that conclusion away from the internet/community, so outside random posts floating around tumblr I haven't really been exposed to a lot of ace discourse.. She brought up a lot of stuff that I hadn't thought about before in exactly that light, so I'm glad I read the book from that perspective.

But. I really hated the sections about her own life. I don't know if I just didn't really like her as a person/her voice, but I found these sections really annoying. She spends a lot of time trying to justify to the reader that she's actually ace even though she likes having sex with her boyfriend, which like.. girl, no one is trying to tell you that you're not ace? I just think it's a weird choice to include in the book, especially at such great length. Like clearly SHE feels insecure about whether she's actually ace or not and is projecting on the reader... Also, her first boyfriend wanted to be polyamorous and it made her insecure and it's obvious that she still has a chip on her shoulder about it. I think open relationships of various sorts are a pretty common way that allo/ace couples deal with sexual mismatch when they choose to stay together, but she barely discusses it outside mentioning that some of her interview subjects chose to do that. She also makes a point of letting us know that she wouldn't date another ace person because she likes to feel sexually wanted even though she's kind of meh about actually wanting the sex. Like, ok girl, you do you.

So, my accurate star rating would be:

Academic/interview sections: 4/5 Well researched, worth reading.
Memoir sections: 1/5 This girl is profoundly annoying and sounds kind of vapid.