Review of Shapes of Love by L.V. Peñalba

This was at times a hard book for me to read, and I wasn’t expecting that. At thirty-six, I feel comfortably removed from the vicissitudes of young adulthood. I thought I had put to bed the thorny doubts and dissatisfactions with which Sasha wrestles. Yet L.V. Peñalba presents some of the struggles of aroace people in such a raw, unflinching way that is so painfully relatable. My heart. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Wednesday Books in return for a review.

Sasha is nineteen and unexpectedly rocketed to pop stardom on the back of her first album. She’s still adjusting to the fame of her pop persona, Sassy, when her manager bullies her into a PR romantic relationship with Kai, Sasha’s ex. It’s meant as a cover for rumours that Sasha might not be straight—might, in fact, be aromantic and asexual. The rumours happen to be true. Yet her label fears Sasha coming out would destroy her nascent fandom’s faith in her ability to speak to romantic heartbreak and loss. (They believe the songs from her first album were about her previous relationship with Kai.) And so, these two former friends and lovers embark on a fake-dating relationship that of course goes off the rails spectacularly, because why wouldn’t it?

You know me: I don’t normally go in for fake dating. A notable exception I recall is the phenomenal Honey and Spice; Bolu Bablola really made me care about these characters. (To All the Boys is a nice honourable mention as well, but if I am being completely honest I am there for Kitty, my fictional ride or die, above all else.) So when I heard about a new book with an aroace protagonist in a fake-dating relationship, I was like, “Oh, interesting.” As I said above, however, I didn’t expect it to sink its storytelling claws into me. Yet here we are: this is a beautiful book, and I can’t stop and won’t stop thinking about it.

Sasha is such an intricately crafted character—all of the main characters are, but this is her story, so let’s focus on her. The daughter of two married lesbians, one of whom is Hispanic, Sasha has grown up in a queernormative environment. I deeply enjoy that this is not that kind of coming out story; Sasha starts the story secure in her aroace identity and having shared that with her parents, sister, and her best friends. I enjoyed the portrayal of Sasha as an all-around teenager who is sliding into adulthood in this era: the obsession with fanfic, the balancing of texts with phone and video calls, the scrolling on social media while vaguely being aware that it’s probably not a good idea to be so online. Sasha’s world is recognizable to a chronically online elder millennial like myself, yet it’s also firmly Gen Z in a way that doesn’t feel stereotypical or generalizing. Her musical career’s ascent is meteoric yet ironically realistic in this day and age, as are of course the machinations of manager Marissa. All in all, I adore Sasha, and it is this connection Peñalba forges between her and the reader that makes Shapes of Love so perfect.

See, it’s so easy for a skeptical reader like myself (especially as I have never been in a romantic relationship, fake or otherwise) to ask, “Why does she go along with it?” So easy. And while I firmly hold that every author deserves some suspension of disbelief in these situations, I also think they need to work—and Peñalba does the work. Sasha hates this PR relationship from the beginning, yet she acquiesces because Marissa knows exactly what buttons to press. Do I wish Sasha had stood up to Marissa at the beginning and said no? Of course! (Though then we would have no story.) Yet it’s believable that a label manager could convince a nineteen-year-old who knows how acephobic and arophobic our world is that a fake relationship is a better career choice than coming out.

In this way, Shapes of Love becomes a low-key commentary on the nature of fame, virality, and stardom (these three overlap but are not the same) in the 2020s. As Sasha succumbed, I found myself thinking quixotically of Taylor Swift—who is my age, and thus a millennial rather than a Gen Z, but who I think created a mould for the Gen Z stars who have followed. Swift is someone who, since she was around Sasha’s age, has never been allowed to be anything less than a polished persona created by her management (whether that is her former label, her parents, herself in concert with her team, whoever). I have this vivid memory of watching a vlog that Taylor or one of her friends posted on YouTube, back when it was young and so were we. They were backstage at someone’s concert, and they were being goofy and unguarded. It felt very genuine in a way that is almost impossible these days, where even the most “authentic” clips posted by stars are staged or scripted, as we see here in Shapes of Love. While I cannot speak from personal experience, my suspicion is that many Gen Z fans watch these inauthentic moments and know, at least subconsciously, they are fake. Gen Z fans are not any less intelligent or discerning than older fans! The demarcation exists, rather, in that many Gen Z fans (and quite a few millennials, I will grant) put that aside because the inauthenticity is the point. The performance is the price paid for the privilege of being perceived, and in our Benthamic panopticon of a society, perception is power. While the most diehard Swifties might genuinely believe Taylor is everything she seems to be on camera, I suspect most would readily agree she’s a brand first and a person second—they just think that’s OK. That’s the price of pop stardom, and many think they would be OK paying it.

Shapes of Love, then, asks the age-old question if that fame is worth it. Beyond being in the closet, beyond simply fake dating, it asks the question of whether you’d like to be a monied marionette versus a broke-but-real boy. (With all due respect to Disco Lines and Tinashe, I think the answer is the latter—but I’m saying that as someone who is rather grateful I’ve never gone viral or made any real money off being online!)

Yet for all its focus on fame, this novel always keeps Sassy’s fans at the periphery. They intrude from time to time when she seeks them out on social media. For the most part, however, this is a story about Sasha, not her pop persona, and the people who know her intimately. Nothing emphasizes this more than Asher, who when he is first introduced seems like a very one-note and shallow antagonist—until Peñalba pulls him out of the paper and into three dimensions. It’s really lovely, seeing Asher blossom into a full-throated character as Sasha gets to know him better. I wasn’t expecting to like him as much as I did.

I have probably spoiled too much, and I won’t spoil the ending. But this is the part that makes me cry. The fallout of a fake-dating plot is always a little contrived in stories like this. Again, though, Peñalba has a way of putting a fresh spin on it. I have been where Sasha has been. I’ve browsed the rolodex of relationship labels like QPR (queerplatonic). I’ve wondered what if.

And, yeah, I have worried about what it means to be alone my entire adult life.

Our entire society is built around the idea that you need romance. You need sex. You need to find someone or else. Call it amatonormativity, call it compulsory sexuality, call it what you will—it sucks. It’s every bit as nasty and pernicious a form of discrimination as the transphobia I also wrestle with—in some ways, honestly, more, because the transphobia is so overt and visible these days it is easier to battle, whereas this seeps into your pores like a coating of invisible dust, and you don’t notice it accumulating until you can barely breathe.

Shapes of Love helped me breathe.

Again, I write all this as a thirty-six-year-old who happens to have a stable career and a house of her own. I’m good. I can’t imagine struggling with all this stuff as a nineteen-year-old girl in this day and age. Well, I can now, thanks to Peñalba and Sasha.

I want this book everywhere, in stores and libraries and schools. I want aroace youth to read it. I want allo youth to read it. I want you to read it. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and healing, and despite Sasha and I having so little in common, it made me feel seen.