Thank you for the advance copy NetGalley. I enjoyed reading this book. The main character, Joy, is asexual and is in love with Malcolm, her best friend from college. Malcom is into Summer and Summer’s ex, Fox catches feelings for Joy. All of these characters have differing ideas about what it means to be “in love.” Joy has to overcome stereotypes throughout the book and dig deep to understand what she wants in a relationship. This book gives off “My Best Friends wedding” vibes. Really enjoyed this read.

I don't usually like single POV or anything that even whiffs of friends-to-lovers, but I really loved this one! Black, asexual heroine with a beautiful exploration of attraction, desire, and loving across difference. And it's really funny!

Definitely recommend.

Thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for this ARC.

I was sold immediately based on the synopsis. It sounded like this book was written fully for my preferences in romance. Unfortunately when I got into the book, it fell flat for me. The story was interesting and the romance potential hooked me. The writing felt stilted and I struggled to keep my focus on the book. Enjoyable but overall I was left wanting more chemistry conveyed in the writing.

Thank you for an early copy.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the e-book of The Romantic Agenda by Claire Kann.

Well this was a fun one! Though at times it was hard to keep everyone straight. Joy is in love with Malcolm. But Malcolm really likes Summer. Summer is in love with love. And Fox is Summer’s ex-boyfriend. Got it? This story takes place over one weekend and it's really a great weekend at the beach kind of read. Book clubs are going to love this one!

What a breakthrough novel of ACE visibility! Kann gently teaches her readers about asexuality while affirming her characters and readers identities like

Thanks to Berkley and Netgalley for the early copy of this in exchange for a review.

I was happy to see asexual representation in this, which I haven’t read before. Joy is in love with her friend Malcolm that she works with and the majority of this book is about a weekend trip with Joy, Malcolm, Malcolm’s gf and her friend. This one was very slow and it didn’t seem like much happened. I really hated how it ended too.

I was not prepared to learn so much in a romance novel but I learned soooo much about asexuality and the spectrum. It was for sure an eye-opener for me

I loved Joy's honesty and jokes - she seemed like a bright star in the room. Some people were just drawn toward her because she has one of that personality

Now I don't typically love a pinning love story - the best friends where one thinks they should be together but I can say that Joy didn't stay that way for too long. I am happy to say she realized her feelings and made the right decisions in my mind

Fox is a grump and we all love a grump. Like everyone he is drawn to Joy and that pairing was great to watch. The consent and boundaries talk was awesome to read

I just enjoyed this new view of a romance. It made things more real and added a dynamic, not typically written to the mix.

It was just lovely to read

First and foremost can we be proud of the ace rep in this book — it was excellent!

Joy is in love with Malcolm, but he is in love with Summer. When Malcolm asks Joy to accompany him on a trip — she agrees after much hesitation.

Then she meets Fox, Summers ex — grumpy and yet funny. Despite the banter between these two, they find out that they've got a whole lot in common.

A whole lot of drama, but the kind that leads to the happiest ending ever.

This story was ok to me.

To start this off I loved the asexual rep. This was my first time reading a book with this rep in it and I loved it!!

Now for the kind of bad but really it's a me problem. I really couldn't get into this book because it is in third person and I have a hard time reading books from that perspective. I know I know, I shouldn't judge a book because of the pov it's written in but my brain was having that hardest time getting over saying the characters name repeatedly when I already knew who was talking. Also I found myself getting annoyed with Joy with how much she wanted and just had to be with Malcolm not realizing that should could and did so much better without him. I'm so glad Fox was there to help shed some light, even though he was the grumpy one, on her valuing her self worth.

***Received ARC for honest review***

I had the pleasure of attending a panel featuring several authors including Claire Kann recently and after hearing her speak about The Romantic Agenda, I knew I had to read it.

Things to look forward to:
- Tropes like: fake dating, forced proximity, vacation romance, only one hammock
- ace representation
- A grumpy silver fox named Fox ;) I loved how he wanted to learn more about Joy and always respected her boundaries. The consent was top tier and the spa day and hammock scenes were two of my favorites.
- So much unrequited love and pining. Seriously, it was an entire forest. I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it was done so well.
- Complex relationships and relatable characters. No one is perfect in this book, but I felt that they were all ultimately good people. I appreciated that everyone was learning and growing and that even when mistakes are made, the characters weren't condemned for them.

I both read and listened to The Romantic Agenda and really enjoyed the performance by Adrienne Walker. She captured Joy so perfectly and I had no problem differentiating between characters.

Audiobook Review
Overall 4 stars
Performance 4.5 stars
Story 4 stars

CW: death of friend (past), grief, anxiety

*I voluntarily read and listened to an advance review copy of this book*

My favorite romances are about self-growth, so this one is *grabby hands*

In The Romantic Agenda, we have a character who needs to figure out her feelings for the best friend who is also her boss/business partner–it honestly feels like he's the first, but he refers to her as the second, so okay. Is that one disconnect of many or does she need to take that final step and explain that when she says "I love you," she means "I'm in love with you," even though the possibility of rejection and screwing up their ten-year dynamic tears her up inside?

Claire Kann writes books about people who don't live by the sexist constraints that monogamy defaults to by either ownership or fear. In this book, she carefully turns that around in her deft hands to show it from all angles–the good, the bad, the selfish, the co-dependent, the abundance of love.

I adore Claire Kann. I love her queer protagonists and her asexual ones. I love her allosexual partners and friend who find room for different kinds of love in their heart. I wish there were more Claire Kanns out there getting published, but until then, we need the praise the one we have.

This was one of those books where no one was perfect and you couldn't help but fall in all of the messy trappings. But it was so great to read a story that was just so queer!! It was so outside of the heteronormative scope of writing. The ways it showed the MC's sexuality on a spectrum.

CLAIRE KANN BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH AN INCREDIBLE ASEXUAL ROMANTIC COMEDY. It's Claire Kann! What did you expect? A flop? YOU THOUGHT WRONG. Claire Kann will never disappoint me. Are you asexual? Do you love romance books? You should buy this one. Keep it on your shelf. In hardcover and paperback. Will 100% cheer you up after a rough day.

The Romantic Agenda is an adult contemporary romance by author Claire Kann. This book is a bit of self discovery and a bit of a comedy of errors with everything thinking they like one person in this small interwoven group of friends, when maybe you are actually meant for someone else. There is also great diversity rep in this novel, which one rep that I don’t see too often and I loved reading about-two of the characters are asexual, which is fantastic. Even better is the fact that we get to see how two different people approach asexuality very differently, which I really appreciated because everyone is different.

Here is what you need to know about the story to set the stage: Joy is in love with Malcolm.
But Malcolm really likes Summer. Summer is in love with love. And Fox is Summer’s ex-boyfriend. If that sounds fun, then you will really enjoy this lighthearted read. I really enjoyed getting to know all of the different characters, and I was there for all the pining. But when I realized that maybe some of these crushes were going to change and transfer to other characters (at the end) I was left hoping that some of that happened a little earlier in the book. It was still a really enjoyable read, and I loved Joy.

My favorite character in the book is Fox. I love his grumpiness and his sense of humor. He stole the book in my opinion and I wanted him to get his happy ending most of them all. Bottom line: if you are looking for a contemporary romance that features asexual rep, then The Romantic Agenda might be a fantastic book for you to check out. I enjoyed this one a lot.

I found myself unable to focus or to get into this book. I wanted to like it and I was pleased about the asexual representation in it.

4.5 stars. It is pretty hard for me to write a review because this book is really different from anything else I've ever read. This is a beautiful and funny unconventional romance novel about Joy, a Black asexual woman who is hilariously weird. Joy is in love with her best friend since college, Malcolm, a Black asexual man whose exes all felt threatened by Joy and Malcolm's very queer platonic best-friendship. The plot centers around a weekend cabin trip Malcolm plans for Summer, his very very bubbly white friend who he hopes to launch a relationship with using the trip. Malcolm invites Joy along to accompany Summer's ex, Fox. This situation is definitely as emotionally fraught for Joy as it sounds.

The author did a beautiful job of writing such complex characters who struggle and grow in their character arcs and their relationships through the course of this book. I am not ace but I really loved how the author portrayed the nuance and complexity of ace identity through Joy and Malcolm, who have very different relationships with romance and sex. I also absolutely loved Joy--she was witty and weird in the best way. Though she never identified as such she definitely seems neurodiverse and I loved how REAL she and her emotional responses felt.

I would definitely suggest readers go into this book with an open mind--it doesn't really follow any of the heteronormative romance tropes or storylines, and I feel like it centers Joy as a character and her character growth above the plot of the romance/relationships. The book only covers the beginning of the actual "romance," but it is done so tenderly and beautifully. Of course, there is still a HFN/HEA.

✨Book Review✨

📚: The Romantic Agenda
✍🏾: Claire Kann
❇️ : ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐/5

Okay so I really loved this book. At first, I was being a brat and nitpicking on the writer’s style (which is simply different from my own) but by the end I was rooting hard for a happy ending.

This is a really cool, queer take on a summer romance novel. Joy is madly in love with her best friend Malcom, but when he confesses to seeing someone new and invites her to a camping trip to meet the new girl, Joy sees it as an opportunity to finally come clean about her feelings. Obviously, hijinks ensue and a weird love triangle/square/venn diagram appears.

The whole book is from Joy’s POV and she was so unique that I loved living in her head. Also, Joy is asexual and I learned so much about my ace siblings while reading this book. It was cute, it was fun, it was sexy, it was relatable, I totally loved it. Everything I could ever want out of a beach read.

💐: Thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub for setting me up with a digital copy of The Romantic Agenda for an honest and unpaid review.

This book was super cute you guys, let me tell you why.

This book reminded me of “My Best Friend’s Wedding” with a little mix of “27 Dresses” and I was here for it. Not only was this a cute romance comedy but I learned a lot along the way. I wasn’t as familiar with people who label themselves asexual, so learning more about what it means and what it’s like made me appreciate the author more for educating me. I loved how she talked about topics like race, sexual orientation and interracial relationships. This book was uniquely different in every best way possible and I hope to read more books of hers in the future.

If you like reading about love squares, grumpy/sunshine duos, beautiful friendships, fake dating tropes, ace romance, and vacation vibe settings you’re going to throughly enjoy this romance novel coming out April 12th of this year.

As an asexual adult, I loved reading about other asexual adults navigating dating and romance! I love Joy and her endless supply of bad puns. Fox was a fantastic grumpy foil to her radiant sunshine.

I love that Claire Kann took time to explore the differences in how Summer (a white woman) and Joy (a Black woman) moved through the world, specifically at the grocery store. It was such a beautifully subtle way to describe a Black woman's experience without plumbing the depths of racist trauma. Ultimately, The Romantic Agenda was allowed to be a story about Joy's, well, joy.

I fell in love with the title and cover immediately. The representation was on point and overall this was a fun romcom that turned out to be a quick and easy read