I did not enjoy this book, I really wanted to but I did not enjoy it. The story was just entirely confusing and disfunctional at the same time. I wanted to love this story so much because the idea of having an asexual princes would have changed the entire genre romantic cliche's but there was no character that I enjoyed and I found myself just wanting to close the book at each lack of connection I had with the book.

I was unable to review this book because of a conflict in my schedule. Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused the publisher or the author of the work. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review for you and I look forward to reviewing for you in the future.

*I received this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

This was such an amazing little adventure.

The plot is pretty linear and being that it is so short, I wasn't expecting too much detail or involvement; I think it had just the right amount.

Love and romance are not everything in life and while I am a person who enjoys those things when reading, I do think it is important to remember some people don't know those feelings or would just rather not read about them. This story is for those who are ace, and I think it is just about time.
I think this was written well and it was absolutely lovely. It had exactly what it needed and nothing more, while also throwing in some fun fairy tale background which made me smile and chuckle.

I did think the ending was a bit unfulfilling because royalty always need an heir eventually... but I still thought it was a good ending for everyone involved.

I definitely recommend this to asexual/aromantic people -- you are not alone and there is nothing wrong with you!
I also think anyone wanting a cute, fun, light story should check this one out!

(3.5 stars)

I enjoyed this modern fairy tale a lot, especially as it subverted the usual idea of fairy tales being about finding romance by having an aro/ace protagonist. The writing was simplistic but not bad, and I thought it went with the fairy tale-vibe quite well. However, I wish that there had been a distinction between romantic love and other types of love (platonic, familial) as often people assume that aromantic people feel no love at all which is obviously not true and that wasn't quite addressed. It was a representation of only one form of aro/ace person, rather than all of them, and the two aro/ace characters had the same experiences which implied all aro/ace people are romance and sex repulsed. (note: I'm not aro/ace myself but I noticed some aro/ace reviewers picked up on this as well).

I wasn't really a fan of this. Some whimsical approaches to tropes, but a bit clumsily done -- the prophecies and roadside encounters and magical trades would have been more convincing if they hadn't felt overly obvious and laboured. Something about the ace/aro rep also felt off to me, possibly the protag's insistence over and over again that she didn't feel love, with no distinction between romantic love and love for family or friends. I'd like to see more ace retellings of fairytales, given their obsession with marriage as the only real happy ever after, but I'd need them to have a stronger writing style, and more nuanced characters. I felt this novella was far too short for any characters to have any depth or meaningful motivations, so they didn't convince me.

This review appears on Goodreads, but as it is brief and I didn't particularly enjoy the book, I won't be cross-posting it to my blog.

When I found this book I was super excited. A fairytale with an aroace protagonist! That's amazing.
While I personally don't identify as aroace, I wanted to pick this novel up for exactly that reason, especially as (as far as I know) the author identifies as aroace too! Sadly I ended up being very disappointed. I liked the idea but I think the execution didn't work well and the writing was too simple and repetitive. I could have overlooked this for good representation but that fell flat too.

The idea of a fairytale with an aroace protagonist is wonderful and could have been used so well to go against the typical fairytale tropes. Instead there was nothing new about this story except for the aroace characters. I understand that it is supposed to be the focus but I really wish we had gotten some more variety.
This was also connected to the very simplistic writing. I just expect a fairytale to involve some more whimsical writing. Normally I really don't pay a lot of attention to that anyway but I just felt like the descriptions fell flat and there were too many repetitions.

Something I definitely want to point out is the fact that there was not enough distinction between someone being aromantic and someone not loving at all. Aromantic people are very well capable of love, be it in friendship or family, etc. It's just not romantic love. While I'm sure the author knows this, I think especially as this is such a sensitive topic, there should have been more attention paid to that. It's already a little bit problematic in the title and sadly doesn't get better in the novel itself.
I also had huge problems with the villain. Again, I think I understand where the author is coming from and there is redemption. But it really didn't seem necessary. The actions of the villain didn't even make sense. What's up with that scene where he conjures a man and a woman making out? I'm not aroace and still would have been very uncomfortable if he had made that happen right in front of me. That's just weird and your reaction to that says nothing about how you identify.

Ultimately, I think the author's intention was good and I'm always happy to see more stories representing asexual and/or aromantic people, especially in Fantasy, I just really don't think it was executed well. It's only a short story but I had to push myself to even finish it!

Boy, do I have Thoughts(tm) on this book.

Full disclosure: I’m aroace and I think the author is also aroace. So there is that. Also: spoilers ahead.

The first thing that made me a bit wary of The Loveless Princess was its title. It’s clear by the blurb that Anette is aromantic and probably asexual, and while it’s quite obvious the most aromantic people never experience romantic love in their life, we do experience other kinds of love (most of us, anyway, which is to say, aromanticism isn’t the absence of all love, it’s the absence of romantic attraction). One of the biggest myths about aromantic people is that we are incapable of every type of love ever. That’s why so many people call us psychopaths. Or liars and manipulators. The fact that we usually don’t feel romantic love is used to mean we don’t feel any love at all, so it was extremely disappointing to see an aroace princess being called “loveless”. She isn’t loveless. She loves other people in other ways. She just doesn’t feel romantic love. That’s it.

Unfortunately, the distinction is not made in the book as well. Anette thinks, and at one point even says, that she doesn’t feel love, which… isn’t true. She loves her parents. She is capable of empathy. Again, she just doesn’t feel romantic love. I know it might seem like as small thing, but believe me, as someone who had “cold”, “frigid” and “monster” thrown in my face because I have no interest whatsoever in finding a boyfriend or girlfriend, the distinction is not only important, it is essential. Being aromantic and asexual doesn’t make me into a loveless monster and doesn’t make it impossible for me to love. I still love. A lot.

(And I’m a bit uncomfortable with not feeling love being equated in society with being monstrous as well, but that’s not my lane).

Things only got worse when it was revealed that the villain of the story is also an aroace person who tried to free Anette from her marriage by kidnapping the prince. And then even worse (again) when said aroace person conjured a beautiful woman and a beautiful man to make out in front of Anette so she could prove (by being disgusted by them) that she was also aroace.

Look, I have no words to explain why this scene infuriated me, but I will try: not all aroaces are sex- and romance-repulsed. Not all aroaces are sex- and romance-repulsed. I can’t believe that 1. this needs to be said and 2. that a scene like that made it into a real book. I’m aroace. I fluctuate between being sex indifferent and sex repulsed, and I do enjoy romance. Hell, I wrote a whole post about being aroace and loving romance. Anette being or not being disgusted by two people making out in front of her would NEVER be enough to prove she’s aroace. We are a very, very diverse group. I, an aroace person who is definitely, aggressively, aroace, wouldn’t be disgusted by two people making out in front of me (I mean, it’d be awkward, all right, but disgust? No). Does that make me less aroace?

No, it doesn’t, and having a scene like that in a book that already fails to make a distinction between romantic and platonic loves implies just that.

The book also fails in other aspects: the characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue is awkward and the writing is well… Not the best. The Loveless Princess needed at least one more round of editing before being published, and honestly, not even it would’ve saved it for me. It’s tricky to write books with aro/ace chars because there are so few of them out there that we risk making generalizations that just aren’t truth and centering experiences that are not universal. That’s why we need to be careful. This book presented only One Way to Be AroAce and it didn’t contradict that in any way. Anette’s and the villain’s (can’t be bothered to remember his name, sorry) experiences with being ace and aro are not the only ones out there and that awful scene failed to address that. That’s why this book failed me.

Overall, this wasn’t a good book, in my opinion, when it comes to the rep but also to the story/writing itself. 1.0 star to The Loveless Princess.

I am very sorry to say this, because I really wanted to like this book and Anettes character, but ... It was just so boring and felt heavily constructed to me. There were no emotions at all, not even between the two persons that were supposed to be the passionate ones. I felt nothing while reading this short story and maybe that was exactly the point, but I don't think so.

I am very sorry to say this, because I really wanted to like this book and Anettes character, but ... It was just so boring and felt heavily constructed to me. There were no emotions at all, not even between the two persons that were supposed to be the passionate ones. I felt nothing while reading this short story and maybe that was exactly the point, but I don't think so.

This is a really, really short book -- just 56 pages -- so it's a little hard to judge.

I enjoyed Princess Anette a lot. She had a great personality and strong moral compass. I sympathised with her situation and was rooting for her throughout the story. She's also the first time I've ever seen an aroace princess, so bonus points for that!

Although the book is short, I feel the pacing was terribly off. The first half could have been condensed to ages pages without much loss. The section detailing Anette's quest needed either a much larger percentage of the book or for the book to be longer, with the extra pages in this part. I thought there was lots of potential in the quest half of the story and would have loved to see each encounter given more time to develop.

[Note on the rep: Neither of the terms aromantic or asexual are used in the text but Anette frequently states that she has no interest in love or sex. Personally, I did think a clearer distinction could be made between 'love' (e.g her parents, friendships) and 'romantic love'. I'd really like to see aro and/or ace readers thoughts though.]

This review will go up on my blog, Foxes and Fairy Tales, on 08 June
https://foxesfairytale.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/review-the-loveless-princess

Oh well wow, that was fast, I had no idea that the book was so short, I would call it a short story, because it only has 56 pages, which is crazy, it was clearly quick to read but it was, certainly, the opposite of what I expected


Anette is a princess, she's forced to marry with prince Everest because it's what every princess "is supposed to do", but Anette can't be less excited about it, in fact she doesn't want to marry the prince and not just because she doesn't knows him, but she doesn't feel like loving anyone or falling in love with anyone, she's an asexual character, which was super interesting to read.

Well despite everything, she has hopes that once she get married then she might get in love with the prince as her mother told her, but one night she discovers her husband and the stable man kissing each other, then she gets crazy and starts yelling things at him, she feels so frustrated because she has had to give up her life for him and she thinks that he has not even mattered in any way and after facing him she wants so much that he disappear, that in fact he does, and then she feels super guilty about and deside to undertake a trip to find him so that he can be happy next to the person he has chosen, which is not her, of course and it's here when everything becomes a bit weird guys


I think that the story seeks to be original and different and that is wonderful I've never read about a main character like this one, so I was excited to see where this was going. I like the idea of Anette to think that happiness doesn't have to go through a marriage nor to love someone, I think it's a very advanced thinking for the time where the plot unfolds. I really liked the fact that the search for Anette is for the happiness of seconds and not for her own, that is very noble of her


Originally I thought this would be a revenge story , for some reason sounded like that, but in the end I ended up finding myself with a fairy tale which took me by surprise, I didn't expect the magic at all, but yeah, we have much of that here. In her journey to find the prince, Anette met very peculiar, magical and somewhat creepy characters , that somehow help her achieve her goal


Once you get used to how strange this is, then you can enjoy it, on the other hand, for being so short ,we don't have much time with the characters, so I only have first impressions of most of them.


Find a little absurd the fact that Anette didn't wonder herself where all those magical moments came out, it was like something totally normal for a woman to appear in a tree and then she blinks and is next to her and she was like "I didn't want to get married" lol .


I think she asked all the wrong questions during her trip, although I admire her bravery and audacity, she's a real and daring girl so I think if I would have had more time with her maybe I would have enjoyed it more


In short, it's a short story with a great diversity of characters, I think I understood where her want to reach and what the author wants to express with her plot, you don't need a romantic love or have a relationship or get married or anything of it, to be happy, and that's a good lesson, although it wasn't what I expected, it was a bit confusing overall

I did enjoy this novella and I read it all in one sitting, but the frustrating thing about this (and I say this a lot for novellas) was its length. I enjoyed the characters, I enjoyed the story plot and I really enjoyed the fairytale elements and how they were woven into the stories. However, I have many problems with it and most of these are due to its length. I feel like the conflict was too easily resolved, I feel like the character arcs were too short and limited and I felt like it hammered home the Anette being ace a little too much (and I say that as someone who identifies with her as well).

I would absolutely love to see Anette and her friends and the world they live in in a longer novel. I think this would have been five stars if it had been novel length, with all the conflict and character arcs that came with it. I liked it nonetheless though.

This was so cute and fun! I mean, you've got fairy tale mash-ups ANNDD multiple LGBTQIA characters. That combination right there is enough to make me happy. But the story itself was so much fun too. My biggest complaint was that it was too short. I didn't realize when I asked for this book originally that it was only a novella and I ended up feeling really disappointed that there wasn't more for me to read.

I've mentioned before that short stories/novellas aren't usually my cup of tea in general. There are definitely some excellent ones out there, and I have the utmost respect for anyone who writes good short fiction. But I usually have a harder time getting into those stories. And that was the same problem I had with The Loveless Princess. I feel like I was just starting to really get involved in the story and then...it was done. I would have loved more, although I realize that it wasn't meant to be a full length novel.

So, basically, I loved the bit that I did read. I just had a hard time being completely invested because of how short and somewhat rushed the story felt. But, that being said, I would still 100% recommend this to anyone who loves fantasy.

This was an okay fairy tale version of a asexual character. It's bad though that I didn't like the main character at all Anette was very childish, as was Allan. I liked Aurora the horse better than the human characters.

There was a lot of potential for this to go really wrong, since it features an aromantic and asexual character in a typically heavily romance-is-your-happy-ever-after world. Princess Anette has to get married, and she's not interested in the idea at all. It's not the prince in particular: it's the idea in general. She's not interested in sex or romance at all; she doesn't feel a lack of it in her life, she doesn't even really feel curious about it.

But she has to get married all the same, to the son of Briar Rose, and everyone around her assures her that it'll happen. She'll find her happy ending with the prince.

Well, eventually she does, but not in the simple way they expect. Fortunately, she remains true to her stated identity throughout, without wavering; in that sense, the author deals with having an aro-ace character perfectly. And the setting is kind of cool, with various other fairytales popping their heads up to say hello -- people are descending from a princess who could feel a pea through a hundred mattresses, witches can make jewels come out of your mouth whenever you speak, and three old spinning women have attended quite some weddings in their time as honoured guests. I liked all those references, and the way the story follows the logic of fairytales.

At times it does feel a little simplistic, but it takes a lot of work and space to build something really solid onto the fairytale base, and perhaps it's wrong to expect it. The one thing that does feel wrong to me is that the antagonist is also aro-ace, and it motivates him to be a real ass to everyone. I get that bitterness and loneliness can really mess you up, but ugh.

Review link live from 29th May.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34608556-the-loveless-princess" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="The Loveless Princess" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1489679253m/34608556.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34608556-the-loveless-princess">The Loveless Princess</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16584778.Lilian_Bodley">Lilian Bodley</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2002194742">2 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
I rec'd an ARC from NetGalley/Less Than Three Press in exchange for an honest review. This short story revolves around Princess Anette and her quest to find her husband Prince Everett who disappeared after an 'unfortunate' incident. She is asexual but has empathy or that is how I read it. Strange tale for me, I couldn't really get into it unfortunately, so only 2.5 stars.
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/31134832-gail">View all my reviews</a>

<i>I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Less than Three Press in exchange for an honest review.</i>

I read this work because it was short and I was under the impression that it involved an asexual character. I was misinformed (or didn't remember correctly what I'd been told). The description doesn't actually say that it involves an asexual person, though so it isn't the story's fault. *looks at description on NetGalley* Yeah, doesn't say asexual there either. (ETA: with more thought on the matter, as seen later in my review, yes, Anette is asexual, it is just the case that she's more than just asexual. There's some other element that she is as well, whatever word goes for that. 'alove' or something.)

This is not a story about an asexual main character, she's something . . . extra. This is a story about . . . not actually sure what word gets used. I tried to find a word that could be used for someone who cannot love, but all I can find involve things like "Scientifically speaking, the only people completely unable to love are the people whose brain genetically lacks empathy, people commonly..."; or psychopaths. But that's not the main character either, because The Loveless Princess, Anette, does have empathy. And she didn't really seem like a psychopath. I do not know enough about psychopaths to know though.

Why am I going down this road? Someone who is asexual has no desire to have any kind of sexual relations. They might love, they might get into a relationship, they might . . . etc. They just have no desire to have sex ('person who has no sexual feelings or desires.'). Someone who is aromantic has no desire to have a romance. "A person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others." An aromantic person can have desire for sex, can feel love - just not romantic love. A specific individual might be both asexual and aromantic.

So is Anette asexual? Well, she has no desire to have sex. I'm somewhat short-sighted to immediately say that because she has no ability to love that that means that she's not asexual. Instead she's asexual with the addition of something else (whatever the 'inability to love' part would be called - not aromantic, because, again, they can form attachments/love, just not romantic love - like they can love their parents or siblings, but feel no romantic desire for another). And Anette cannot love at all. Not just can't form romantic attachments. She is, as the title notes, 'The Loveless Princess'. Again, though, she's not a psychopath because she can feel empathy.

Bah. Okay, Anette is a princess of some unknown age who has been told by her parents that she <i>is</i> going to be marrying Prince something or other. They argue but Anette can't get out of it. And no, this isn't one of those fantasy lands where everyone is magically open to everything - this is a land where a man must marry a woman; and Anette's mother actually began to get furious with the idea, short lived, that her daughter might be attracted to women (short lived as Anette feels no attractions at all).

'For reasons' (like, what else is she going to do?), Anette goes along with the marriage. Marries the dude. Glancing at people in the audience, then at the groom, then around, she comes to the conclusion that the man might have some vaguely attractive features . . . to others. She feels nothing towards him.

After they are married, the Prince takes his new wife back to his kingdom (well, his parents at still in charge so 'his kingdom' in the sense that's where he's from). 'Stuff happens'. Turns out the Prince has no real desire for the Princess, like the Princess towards the Prince, but the Prince is definitely not asexual. No, he's homosexual. (He's not bisexual, he can't even get it up to fulfill his duties as a husband to his wife).

'Something happens' and the Prince poofs. Princess has to save him. Quest occurs.

The End (of the short story).

hmms. Sorry to have spent so long battling with the concept of 'asexual not equal alove!'. Annoyed me. Especially considering the underlying theme of the story. On the other hand, yes, marriage/love does not have to be either <i>the</i> path to happiness or, in and of itself - <i>the happiness</i>.

Rating: 3.5

May 12 2017