*review in exchange for netgalley e-arc*

I’m finding it quite tricky to summarise my thoughts on this book. On the one hand, it was super useful and interesting to read, and helped build my understanding on the asexual spectrum - I recently thought I may be demisexual - so I found a lot of the content really interesting.

However, the book was just very different to what I expected. I thought as the title was ‘ace voices’, the book would be lots of ace voices and stories combined into a sort of anthology; but actually it was more that the author had interviewed and collated many ace voices and taken snippets and written them within their own research and words and turned that into the book.

I did still find the book interesting as I said, but with the writing style I really did struggle. It felt very academic and factual, I struggled to get through it easily as that information overload and all the definitions and explanations took me a while to process.

Overall, I’m glad I read the book, it just was one that was maybe not my cup of tea, not because of the content but the way it was put together!

A huge thank you to Jessica Kingsley Publishers and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!
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I read this book during Ace Awareness Week, and it serves a look into the Ace community without the author trying to speak for all. Much of the book is made up of interviews from people who volunteered to speak with the author about their experiences in the asexual, aromantic, demi, and grey-ace community. Young organizes these into chapters by topic and includes discussion questions at the end. I especially liked their inclusion of micro-labels, and making it very clear that there is a distinct separation between sexual attraction and romantic attraction.
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Many of the contributors wished to remain anonymous, so Young assigned each of them a random set of initials. This quickly gets confusing and it is difficult to get a full view of who any of these people are, and how their thoughts intertwine between chapters. The formatting in my early copy would often put all of Young’s introductions to contributors together, followed by all of the quotes grouped together. Once I figured this out, it was easier to go back and forth to connect the dots, but I imagine this will be corrected in the final copy. The author definitely writes from an academic stance and it can feel dry at times, but keep powering through and hopefully you will feel seen or like your world view has been widened.

THANK YOU. I'm so glad to have added "Ace Voices" to my library. This has been a very helpful book as it validates why it doesn't always feel comfortable or safe to be openly asexual. I have recommended this book to the "Queer Christian Fellowship" group that I'm in. Asexuals in the group feel under represented and often misunderstood, I think this book acts as a very accessible and invitational resource for those of us that are asexual and those of us that want to learn more. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to explore asexuality.

brilliant! i loved hearing from all different perspectives of people within the asexual community! definitely worth the read

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the author for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is absolutely the book that every ACE person needs! This book was so incredibly researched and so so well written. The author interviewed 38 ACE people and used that data to answer a set of questions in the book as well as present data from other established studies.

This book should be required reading so everyone understands what ACE sexuality is. I will say while I liked the format of using interview examples in each chapter I think the author would have benefited from either using more information from the same example and using fewer examples or having more topics. Because while the book is quite short, at times it did feel long and I had to quit and come back to it. This topic is so important though I can absolutely see ace people using it as a reference book when they are struggling. The author read as really personable and knowledgeable and I am so glad they chose to write this book.

This book is a great resource for Aces and those who want to learn more about Asexuality. It is full of stories, and packed with a lot of the nuances of Asexuality that most people don't understand/know about.

There was a lot of information, but it never felt boring, and it was actually a fairly quick read. It was so nice to hear from actual Aces about being Ace.

I will definitely be recommending this book. I'm happy to have more books on Asexuality out there! This is a topic near and dear to those in my life, and it's nice to see more people creating (good) resources for others to learn from.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the digital copy of Ace Voices to review.

As someone that’s aroace, I’ve loved how many books have been released in the last couple of years about asexuality! Both fiction and nonfiction. I discovered my aceness only a few years ago and having books like this when I was younger would’ve really helped me feel less isolated from my peers and society in general and more secure in my identity and feelings! I loved getting to read about other ace peoples experiences and definitely recommend this for ace and allo people alike!

Thank you to Jessica Kingsley Publishers and NetGalley for an advanced copy!

First, let me be clear that I am not a member of the a-spec community, so please weigh this review with that in mind!

From the description and title, I was under the impression that this would be an essay collection, but it's more like a series of articles with the author using anonymous survey responses to support their topics. In my opinion, that format wasn't particularly well-utilized here. The quotes/responses often felt very "tacked on" and the author's system of using randomized initials instead of real names or pseudonyms felt very impersonal and awkward, not to mention occasionally confusing. Obviously I respect the desire to protect the respondent's privacy, but I think it would have been a lot more readable to use pseudonyms, as well as being easier to feel a connection to their stories.

I did appreciate getting a deeper look into aromanticism, as that's so often overshadowed by the ace side of things. And I think if you are a new to an ace/aro identity, or are questioning, this could be a helpful tool for exploring that.

Thank you, Netgalley, for the review copy!

I only noticed halfway through that this is the same author of They/Them/Theirs and I really enjoyed that. Like that book, this one was incredibly informative, had a varied and diverse sample group of voices, and came with many, many resources for asexual people (and those wanting to learn about asexuality).

Despite how in depth it was and how it covered so many different topics, it was never dense and difficult to read. It was pretty easy to read without being condescending or patronising. A perfect balance.

I’d highly recommend this for both asexuals and people learning about asexuality

This is a wonderful book that is filled with facts and stories with people on the asexual spectrum. I learned a lot from this book and really enjoyed it from beginning to end. If you are looking for a good and informative nonfiction novel that is about asexuality, then this is the book.

Very informative and interesting read, and it’s great to see more books like this out there, both for those who are Ace and those who are exploring and want to know more

Another non-fiction ace book for the year, but every time I take something new out of it, and this time, I realised this is a workbook! It has questions to make you think about everything that is being explained, and that might be super helpful, especially for baby aces or people who are just grasping the concepts of asexuality and aromanticism. Also, the mistake of calling "Ace Voices" a book that also deals with aromanticism, even though it is not a sexual orientation or necessarily related to asexuality has been addressed by the author themselves in a very satisfying way.

Furthermore, the amount of people who were interviewed for this or spoken to was quite big, making the demographic extremely diverse and wonderfully spread around experiences and identities on the spectrum.

I picked this book up after reading Ace by Angela Chen. As a queer allo person, it’s important for me to understand and respect the ace community so I’ve been doing my best to educate myself. Ace Voices is an exploration about what it means to be asexual, how asexuality intersects with other aspects of a person like race or gender, and how it can shape relationships. The book dives into some topics that may be overlooked in other works like microlabels, intersections with other queer identities, and mental illness, disability, and neurodivergence.

This book includes quotes from a diverse group of ace people who articulate in their own words how their asexuality has shaped their experiences and the author liberally includes those quotes when writing on different topics. That inclusion allows this book to accurately reflect the experiences of the people being discussed and present a kaleidoscope of sometimes contradictory perspectives. Being able to see experiences articulated different ways helped me to gain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of peoples’ lives experiences.

On the other hand, none of these topics were new to me and the book was a bit drier and a more academic counterpart to Chen’s Ace. At times the book can be difficult to engage with as there is a remove between the author and the interviewees. That remove can make it feel less like a conversation with the community and more like researcher speaking about their subject of focus.

This book is far more heavily researched and analytical than I originally thought it would be. The history of asexuality is discussed in greater detail than I've read anywhere else. It examines the language and lack thereof for the types of relationships that don't fit the conventional narrative, and expresses the breadth of variety in relationships by contrasting the experiences of the interviewees. With discussion questions at the end of each chapter and the plethora of resources and references at the end of the book, there is plenty of opportunity for further reading and contemplation on the topics discussed in the book.

If you identify as part of the Aspec community or if you are questioning whether or not you might be on the asexuality spectrum you might find this book useful. If you feel like you lack community as a neurodivergent aspec this book will probably feel like you're meeting a friend and I think it's that particular aspect of the book that makes it valuable
I was especially fond of the section on queerplatonic relationships and polyamory, the author did a phenomenal job of explaining how asexual people actually have no shortage of healthy options if they wish to enter romantic relationships without erasing the aroace part of the community.
There's some talk about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the ace community in there which is something I think we will have to consider a lot more in the next several years along with the impact of the pandemic on neurodivergent people, it was nice to see it make its way outside of the TikTok sphere of discussion at last.
There's a rather long section filled with other resources at the end of the book to further add to your reading list, always a nice bonus. This book is also very forthright in the recognition of its own shortcomings which was very refreshing.
I wasn't a fan of the structure for the micro-labels section which felt kind of hazy to me.
There's a couple interviewees whose initials were shown as ND and NT in a book where neurodivergences are discussed it was a little confusing to see people referred to as ND and NT considering that in most online spaces about neurodivergences these are shorthand for NeuroDivergent and NeuroTypical.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley and Jessica Kingsley Publishers in exchange for an honest review, some of the issues I have with it might therefore not be present in the final published version of this book.

Ace Voices by Eris Young is the first book I have ever read about this particular identity and it was very beautiful and informative. This book answers a lot of questions and would be good for anyone of any age. Especially if you are starting to question heteronormative society!

Such a great book about asexuality. Thanks to JKP for publishing so many Aspec books, and to Eris Young for writing this one :)

Also, this is an ownvoices review.

I requested the book as soon as I saw the title on NetGalley and I immediately regretted it. Not necessarily because I didn’t want to read it, but I wondered what the contribution of this book would be. It seemed similar to Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen and I worried it would be either similar to it or just a long Wiki-like explanation about what asexuality is. In a way, there are definitions and there are conversations that you can find in Angela Chen’s book (and Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown), but I am happy to say this was worth the read. At some point, Young mentions they wrote the book to be active participants in the ace discussion, and they not only did this but also included the many interviewees in it as well.

I really enjoyed the interviews and loved the portions highlighted by the author. I feel a big part of the asexual movement is just us fighting for visibility [[and Young makes a great point that we need to start emphasizing our singularities rather than how much like everyone we’re like]], and the interviews were such a good addition to make this happen.

The book dwells in the ace definitions and the ongoing debates on ace and gender, and ace and sex; I think the addition of talking about the micro-labels was really good, I am used to only seeing people talk about the main labels (aro, ace, gray, etc.) and learning about cupiosexuals and so for was nice.

Other conversations I liked were the ones about asexuals and religion (especially with the Catholic church that glorifies celibacy) and asexuals in relation to the LGBTQA+ community. Knowing that most ace peeps think of themselves as LGBTQ but are rejected by the community, was quite interesting; it’s something that I know quite well, but it’s ironically interesting to see that none of us see asexuality as outside of LGBTQ.

The book also adds discussion questions and an occasional trigger warning, which were both great additions.

My only criticism is that I would have liked to see a bit of discussion about, not only ethnic minorities, internet access, and gender, but also people who do not speak English at all. How do they access ace language? Has it transferred to other languages already?

Anyways, loved that I read this!

I had to really take my time while reading this book. I wrote so many notes and read certain sections over and over again! The writing was so vulnerable and relatable. There was so much for me to learn and so much that I immediately had to share with others as I read it. As a lesbian black woman who recently discovered my asexuality, I felt so seen and understood by the work that was done here, I really appreciated that the author collaborated with so many diverse voices and experiences. The sections on terminology regarding labels and micro-labels was so helpful to me. I discovered words that have helped me describe my asexuality. Truly, thank you, for this five star read.

I am not sure what to think of this book, but I think that other people might find useful. There are things to be learned from things and it's good for anyone who wants to find more info about the ace community.