5/5
As someone who is proudly ace myself, it's great to read other people's experiences of being Ace. It really shows we are not just a monolith, and that we come from all walks of life.
I will definitely be recommending this to anyone who wants to understand the ace identity more.

This book is, in so many ways, the representation that we need. I'm so glad I read it, and will recommend it to other people.

There's so much information in Eris Young’s Ace Voices, it's taken me quite a while to work my way through and digest it all.

I was expecting the author’s story about their personal journey, and Ace Voices is not that. Young’s book is a combination of interviews and the results of surveys they had conducted. It is mostly expository, and I found the snippets from the interviews to be most interesting and enlightening.

The subject matter is fascinating because it is constantly changing, and I’ll say bravo to Young for getting this book out there. By continuing the conversation, and shedding some light on the multitude of the continually evolving definitions of the human experience.

This is not what I originally anticipated. I could hardly connect to this as it felt more like an assignment someone wrote for their Research class with all the survey results? I feel bad but the title was quite misleading because I thought I would be reading about the author’s experience

This wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I went in expecting a range of people discussing their experiences being a-spec, and it wasn’t that. I enjoyed a lot of the points the author made, I didn’t have a bad time, I was just expecting something different.

TW// mentions of sexual assault, mentions of sexual abuse, mentions of genocide, mentions of slavery, mentions of rape, aphobia, mentions of depression, mentions of PTSD, brief mention of pedophilia, mentions of the COVID pandemic, brief mention of cheating, mention of divorce, mentions of anxiety, mentions of racism, mentions of sexism, brief mention of homophobia, mention of transphobia

It kills me to have to give a book about asexuality such a low star rating. I’m asexual, so I understand how important books about asexuality can be. However, I found that Ace Voices didn’t work for me at all and I unfortunately hated every moment I spent with this book.

The biggest issue is that this book reads like an academic essay or a scientific paper. It doesn’t even read like a well-written one. It relies heavily on the results of surveys, but the inclusion of these survey results was very disjointed. There would be strings of one quote following another in a way that was jarring and made me feel disconnected from the book. The choice to include survey results from specific people also didn’t work well because I felt that using initials like “RR” instead of a person’s name made these people’s stories feel like they were being reported for a science study as opposed to sharing what was supposed to be intimate details about real people’s lives. Everything about the inclusion of survey results made this book extremely boring and honestly slightly inaccessible. If you’re not super familiar with reading complex academic articles, you may struggle with understanding and getting through this book.

I think there was three ways that this book could’ve worked better:
1. If the author chose to write about their personal experience with asexuality. It would read more like a memoir, but I think it would be meaningful for Eris Young’s unique life experiences to be shared in detail with readers.
2. If each chapter had been an essay written by the survey respondents. Honestly me (and a lot of other people) assumed that that’s what this book would be. If the survey respondents were given time to share their experiences with asexuality without the disjointed quote formatting, it would’ve been a lot more powerful and impactful.
3. If this book had stuck solely to facts with no personal experiences so people could learn ace and aro terms. This was not what Eris was intending with their book though since they constantly question the need for labels and strict defintions in their book.

It’s also worth noting that this book is called “Ace Voices” yet it discusses aromanticism in detail. The title is very misleading because asexuality and aromanticism are two very different identities. “Aro and Ace Voices” or “Results from Aro and Ace Surveys” would be more fitting titles for this book.

There are a couple good things this book did, but these elements were not huge parts of the book. There was a good discussion of how asexuality intersects with race (though this had less to do with what the author wrote and more to do with the different people that Eris was quoting). There was also really useful comprehensive trigger warnings at the start of the book and before any chapters that contained triggering content. More books need to use clear trigger warnings so that readers are prepared for what they’re about to read.

I feel bad for being so harsh on this book, but I feel that a lot of people will struggle to finish this book so readers should opt instead to read an asexuality book that is easier to get through. I Am Ace: Advice on Living Your Best Asexual Life by Cody Daigle-Orians is my current go-to recommendation. It teaches asexuality for people who want to learn more about it and it also gives advice to asexual people who are learning to navigate the dating world whilst being asexual.

How do we experience attraction?
What does love mean to us?
When did you realise you were ace?
These are such brilliant aspects of an alternative and positive approach to loving in a different way from societal norms.
Evocative, emotional and real.
Worth your time.

A refreshing collection in which individuals voice their personal experiences with the umbrella of asexuality, whether it be demisexual, greysexual, or some similar identity. Many asexual people have experienced isolation and discomfort because there were relatively few, if any, others like them. Having a collection, like this one, allows readers of a like mind to truly connect and feel a sense of community.

This book came off as very academic in nature. There were points in it where I felt like I was reading an essay or term paper. The writing also came off as very choppy in some parts. The words I kept repeating in my head were “why do I feel like I’m reading a dissertation?”
I’m sure it is the right read for someone, but I do not think I am that person.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me access to the free advanced digital copy of this book.

Interesting, relevant and educational. It’s nice to see books being made abt this identity and as an ace person I would definitely recommend this one.

I found this to be a very insightful and mindful examination of what it means to be ACE. I loved the approaches it took and how it had input from people from across the Ace Spectrum.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions in this review are my own.

We ended up doing a whole shelf around this title for pride month which sold very well - much better than we'd expected. I even bought a copy to donate to our local ace library project. It's very well done, comprehensive, thoughtful, intersectional, and my personal favourite aspect is just how many ace people were interviewed and featured.

I feel so torn about how to rate this!! I was really excited to read this book but found it dry and kind of hard to get into. The author reported on their own research, and so it read more as an unusually interesting research paper than as a nonfiction book. The author included lots of quotes, which I loved, and also ended every chapter with discussion questions. I'm not 100% sure what the intended audience was - I would have preferred if this was more focused on the participants and included longer interviews with them or was more of a facts-only book.

I wanted to love this, but didn't totally. I would recommend Angela Chen's book Ace for someone looking for more of an academic read and Rebecca Burgess's book How to Be Ace for a more informal read. This book seemed to be trying to be both and never really achieved either.

All in all - this is an important topic and I learned a lot. I just think the execution could have used some refinement and clarification on audience.

Thanks so much to Eris Young and Jessica Kingsley Publishers for this ARC through NetGalley! Ace Voices is available now!

Ace Voices is a great exploration of both asexual and aromantic identities. Incredibly meaningful and poignant, I would highly recommend to anyone questioning their own identity, someone who is looking for support, someone looking for a new perspective, or anyone who has a loved one in their life who identifies as Ace. This was a really great and informative deep dive.

I could probably write a thousand different reviews and none of them would come close to explaining just how much this book means to me.

Every page, every word, hit me right in the emotions (both happy and sad) and buried themselves in my heart. An absolutely wonderful and important read.

A fantastic read, as an Ace person it's always very affirming to read anything written by a fellow ace person! Would recommend this to anyone who is ace questioning, or just looking for some support!

We need more books like this and they need to be required reading. Appreciated the many points of view and the care taken on these topics. Books like this are the stories I needed growing up so that I didn't feel lost for as long as I did. I really appreciated the more scholarly approach as well.

It's so nice to see more writing that looks at the ace and aro spectrums being published. This is a really interesting and insightful read, especially with the look into why aro + ace identities are treated the way that they are by society and the accounts from ace, aro, gray-a and demi people.

Ace Voices by Eris Young is exactly the kind of representation and visibility asexuals everywhere could hope for. Many people do not realize the "a" doesn't stand for ally, and it is books like this that will educate and inform people about what the "a" really stands for--which is asexual. Asexual is such a broad term, which encompasses a wide range of expression and identities. As a demi-sexual woman, I appreciated the breadth of representation present throughout the book--which was informed by a multitude of interviews Young conducted with people across the entire asexual spectrum.

Young does a great job at presenting all the intersections of sexual identity, gender, race, and more. I'm sure I'll be revisiting this one over time. It was a lot of information to absorb all at once.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my e-ARC.