I wish I didn't but I absolutely hated this book. Whilst it's written with the clear understanding that asexuality is a spectrum, as someone on that spectrum I found it incredibly crass that the authors would feel the right to make sweeping statements like "we believe this" or "the community uses this term".

The writing style itself is good, which is why the rating isn't lower, but the content is just not for me whatsoever.

The premise of this book is interesting, and although the authors know their stuff on the topic at hand. Their style did not transfer over well to a book.

I would have enjoyed listening to this from them, and did get some information from the book, but most of the time I found myself bored.

Sounds Fake But Okay is a nonfiction book in which two hosts of an aspec-related podcast give perspectives on a range of topics, including love, sex, family, friends, and gender. The two authors combine their thoughts with occasionally their individual stories and often quotes from other people who took part in their survey for the book. The split into separate topics in each chapter gives them space to cover a lot, though the final chapter glosses over a few other key topics (housing and media are two) that it isn't quite clear why they weren't given more space.

As an asexual person, it's interesting to see what these sort of nonfiction books cover, and this one tries to have a broad perspective that goes beyond just thinking about relationships and sex, donning what they call "purple aspec glasses" to see things differently and question common structures. The questioning of societal norms is admirable, but sometimes it felt like this was framed as something new, particularly around topics like gender and relationships where all sorts of queer people have been doing work for years and decades on deconstructing these ideas and finding new ways to live in society. Particularly the point at which two cis women talked about needing to use these aspec glasses to view gender differently, I felt that the book could have at least acknowledged some of the previous ways people of all sorts of sexualities and using various frameworks have done this.

Similarly, the book seems to simplify the experiences of various people and groups, possibly due to the tone and conversational feel of the book, but there needed to perhaps be a bit more tact about how apparently easy it is for straight people to understand how a gay man might experience sexuality, which in reality is not going to be that straightforward at all. Maybe it's just from having these sorts of conversations play out on the internet over the last decade or so, but it did feel like the book lacked that level of thinking more realistically and practically about queer existence, community, and solidarity.

The closing chapter covered miscellaneous areas not covered in a previous chapter, and the short Media section, obviously quite a notable area as over the years there have been some aspec characters in media, had a few elements that brought the book down for me, particularly the need to bring up a racist western unnecessarily (with a footnote saying it is racist) and, strangely, a focus on how the views of a certain author of wizarding school novels may have bad views, but that doesn't stop trans people having got things out of those books, comparing this to the idea of questioning the romantic stereotypes found in media you might have consumed when younger. Seeing as many trans people's experiences of those books are not as simple as the authors here make out, and that societal stereotypes are different to transphobia, this part felt unnecessary, and it is possible to talk about rethinking problematic areas of media without drawing the comparison.

Overall, plenty of the book is straightforward discussion of how aspec people can have a variety of experiences of love, relationships, sex, and life, but I felt that the way the book presented certain areas and the lives and experiences of queer people didn't work for me, feeling unconnected to other work. Maybe it is aimed more at people who are very new to the topic of asexuality and aromanticism, and as I read a proof copy the final version may change, but for me, it focused a lot on repeating certain things and didn't go deep enough into discussing or questioning other elements, causing the book to generalise and simplify in ways I don't think the authors intended (seeing as they talk about diverse experiences being important).

As someone questioning my placement on the asexuality spectrum, I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I felt like this book was a mess for several reasons.

Upfront, the authors qualify their experiences as cis white women. While I appreciate the qualification, they immediately give you reason to doubt their legitimacy in representing *a lot* of aspec people. They remedy this by using quotes by members of the aspec community of different identities, races, and genders. I wish they had explained that in the beginning because this was very effective to provide more of the “aspec lens” than the experience of two women. They continue to constantly qualify their statements to seem more “woke” or attuned to others.

For instance, they list examples of romantic-sexual relationships in movies, choosing to list a Western film from the 50s then qualifying their choice saying “we know this is racist, but it’s prominent, and lots of films from this time were racist so it’s hard to pick one that isn’t!” What? We never needed that example in the first place! If it’s racist and questionable, just don’t pick it! They also didn’t provide examples of “good aspec representation” which I really craved while reading. Tell us your critiques AND tell what to look for in media! Footnotes like this disrupt the flow of the book and just lead you to questioning their narrative choices.

The formatting of this ebook was TERRIBLE. I hope they clear it up for the print copy, but literally there were no quotation marks, no indentations or change in font when they quoted other people. Just narrative bleeding into a quote in random places. There would be paragraphs explaining themselves that would lead into a quote that I didn’t… know… was a quote? I found myself wondering which parts the authors had written and which parts their community had written. The early chapters were titled with Kayla’s perspective and another’s with Sarah’s perspective, which you’d expect later on but it just… stops?… and then they’re writing together again for half of the book. It truly did not make sense. This can be fixed with some formatting tweaks and organization of their chapters.

You can tell that this was written by podcasters in the sense that it is very conversational. This doesn’t always translate well to print, though, because Sounds Fake But Okay comes off as an awkward stream-of-consciousness that doesn’t find a definite voice (since I couldn’t tell what was a quote and what wasn’t!!!). They start on a lot of topics and have a lot of breadth, wanting to cover everything very broadly without really finding conclusions on one thing (see: the 1 page written on “Housing” and its affect on people of color that references how they *already talked about housing*… felt like an afterthought). It needs better organization and focus to me.

I did learn a lot about distinctions between romantic and sexual relationships, as well as the spectrum of relationships that can exist between people. It serves well as a cutely formatted coffee table book, supplement for fans of their podcast, or a nice addition to a shelf of LGBTQIA+ nonfiction.

I found this book really interesting and well written. As someone who thinks they may be aspec, I appreciated how the book mixed Sarah and Kayla's own experiences and thoughts with explanations and introductions to various topic, themes, and labels within asexuality and aromanticism. The areas they didn't have experiences within themselves, they made use of a survey they'd conducted so they were able to use replies from other people who identify as aspec. The authors make sure to note that this isn't supposed to be a peer-reviewed scientific book but I still felt they did a good job of educating the reader. It did get a bit repetitive at times, but overall I enjoyed the book and I'd be curious to check out Sarah and Kayla's podcast after reading it.

Actually ace here and this book is... Ace!! (Had to, sorry!) A recommended purchase for general nonfiction and HS collections.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book! I found it well written, well-explained and very helpful. I think it was an easy read to introduce people to asexuality but also was in depth and able to read by someone with prior knowledge of this as well.

It had some really great ideas and concepts discussed in it such as the aspec lens and I really enjoyed seeing the survey responses and hearing other people's thoughts.

I haven't listened to Sarah and Kayla's podcast and I don't think that impacted my enjoyment of this book so I thin kit works well for those who are already aware of the podcast and those who don't.

Definitely recommend this book to...pretty much everyone! Great for those wanting to learn more about different sexualities/romantic attractions, learn more about themselves, it would be a good read for someone (i.e. a close friend or family member) that is trying to understand someone they know who is asexual/aromantic.

Thank you for letting me review this :) I am posting this review on my book blog, bookstagram and GoodReads.

I was very excited to read this book because I've always wanted to understand asexuality more, and this is the second book on the topic that I have read. There are some things that I really enjoyed and appreciated, but overall, I believe it raises more problems.

I want to start with the good things.
The book is a powerful assertion of the value of platonic relationships and rightly questions the societal compulsion that causes people to partner up into monogamous bonds for life. I'm allosexual and a huge fan of planning one's life out with friends. I would love to see more acceptance for platonic relationships, and I enjoyed reading about queer-platonic bonds. It was also interesting to understand why people identify as asexual, their differences, and their thoughts on sex and relationships. I view sexuality as a spectrum in regards both to gendered attraction but also to the degree of sexuality. I have often heard of hyper-sexuality and seen it represented, but very rarely glimpsed asexuality, so this was very good for me.
The authors also rightly point out the legal predicaments that encourage marriage and monogamy, like tax benefits for married couples. Platonic relationships do not have the legal power given to married couples or family members (like in the cause of death), and I enjoyed getting into the structural pressures that promote allosexuality. Apart from ideological pressure, legal measures promote the dominant lifestyle. I did not, however, appreciate their idea that gay marriage somehow sets back queer rights because of the way it supposedly harms platonic bonds. It made me quite uncomfortable to read that.

My disagreements are technical and ideological. On the technical side, one part stood out to me as poorly researched, and it was because I happened to write on the topic for my dissertation. On page 54 (Chapter 3), the authors used "romantic friendships" of the 18th-20th century that coexisted alongside heterosexual marriage as proof that perhaps QPR have a historical precedent. Perhaps those were not homosexual relationships but friendships - that is not true. I would direct the authors to Carroll Smith-Rosenberg's book 'The Female World and Ritual: Relationships Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America'. These were homosexual relationships. But since terms like 'lesbian' did not exist as identities, and did not define who you were, these activities were not a cause of concern. They did not carry stigma, and so these friendships were seen as fully compatible with heterosexual marriage. Someone with no knowledge of those relationships would not pick up on this, but I did. Honestly, reading that bit where they minimised the importance of recognising those relationships as queer, whilst the authors previously criticised gay marriage, gave me a whiff of homophobia. They also said that platonic bonds were valued more back then, which was also not true. People were limited to friendships of the same sex, and men were nonetheless restrained with how they could be affectionate with male friends out of fear of being accused to be homosexual. In my opinion, that section deserves to be revised because it is problematised by the book's biggest issue; generalisations.

The other massive generalisations come with regard to the author's understanding of allosexual people. I say this with kindness, but I don't think Costello and Kaszyca fully understand allosexual relationships. This book is written by people who believe allosexuals have sex with random strangers because they're horny beasts, while ace people are the only ones who think about their sexual preferences. It's giving chronically online, and it's concerning. I'm trying so hard to understand asexuality, but everything is a contradiction. Asexuals don't like sex, but they have sex not because they experience sexual attraction but because they like intimacy? Literally, everyone does that. Same thing with demisexuality; it is a very normal thing to do, and most people are like this. Very few people actually participate in hook-up culture, and I feel like demisexuality is the intellectualized response to disliking hook-up culture. I am puzzled as to why this is being turned into an identity. With the best intentions, there is an assumption that having sexual boundaries is wrong and that it needs to be normalised. But really, wanting to wait until you have feelings before having sex has always been normal.

Lastly, there was a mention of people who are not platonically inclined and how they exist within the ace spectrum. I would like to point out that those people are autistic (as am I), and I feel like that detail is important and should be mentioned. There is something harmful about failing to mention their autism and lumping autistic people under an umbrella term with which they may not be compatible.

Overall, it is an interesting read! I'm always intrigued by books, even if I don't fully agree with them. And I still liked part of it, and I feel like many people will enjoy reading and engaging with it as well :) I give it three stars because I may change my mind in the future when I would have understood asexuality more. I know asexual people struggle with anxiety regarding the topic, and this book will certainly ease their feelings.