📚 Pre-Reading Thoughts
Anthologies always feel a bit like opening a box of mixed sweets: you’re going to love some, like some, and possibly wonder what that one oddly chewy one was doing there. But the premise here - aromantic teens across fantasy and sci-fi settings - felt genuinely refreshing. That kind of representation still doesn’t show up often enough in genre fiction, especially in a way that centres joy, agency, and complexity rather than explanation or justification.
📖 Post-Reading
As I thought…
- The variation in quality is very much part of the anthology experience: some stories feel tight, polished, and emotionally complete, while others feel like intriguing fragments of something larger.
- The genre spread is fun - everything from magical realism to apocalypse survival gives each story its own flavour.
- The core idea holds strong throughout: connection without romance isn’t a lack, it’s its own ecosystem.
It surprised me by…
- How confidently many of the stories refuse to treat aromantic identity as something that needs framing or defending. It’s just there, shaping lives in different ways.
- The sheer range of interpretations: a matchmaking student learning what love actually means, a spaceship pilot rejecting compulsory coupling culture, romance novels turning into dragons (which is objectively an excellent sentence to type).
- How emotionally varied it is despite the shared theme - some stories are quietly affirming, others more sharp-edged or speculative, and a few land like snapshots of something much bigger waiting beyond the page.
What stands out most is the intention behind it: not to define aromantic experience, but to multiply it. That alone makes it feel important in a way that lingers after reading.
🎧 Music Pairing
Anthologies like this don’t really sit under one mood - they’re more like a playlist shuffle where every track belongs to a different emotional weather system.
🎵 Featured Song:
Mitski – “Nobody” (for that blend of distance, clarity, and emotional self-definition)
🎶 Vibe Album:
AURORA – The Gods We Can Touch (because it swings between mythic storytelling and deeply human emotional textures)
🎧 Optional extra energy:
Something like a rotating playlist of speculative fiction soundtracks - slightly different world every track, same underlying sense of discovery.
🌈 Vibe Check
- Colour Palette: shifting spectrum - cool blues, cosmic purples, desert gold, hospital white, neon green glitch
- Soundtrack: page turns like portal openings, distant city hums, quiet conversations that matter more than they should
- Season: all seasons at once, depending on the story you’re in
- Mood: exploratory, affirming, occasionally sharp-edged, often quietly hopeful
- Scent: library paper, ozone after rain, synthetic starlight, fresh-cut grass in a world that might not be Earth
👀 For fans of
- Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block (for genre-blending emotional snapshots)
- The Future Is Queer (for speculative identity-focused storytelling)
- Black Mirror (for the “what if society was structured differently?” angle, minus the doom obsession)
Book Links:
Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/231928138
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0F6BQRVGC
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/being-aro-madeline-dyer/1148300950
IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/being-aro-a-collection-of-aromantic-fiction-about-love-connection-and-empowerment-madeline-dyer/83b1ebd8306e5b6a
About the Author:
Madeline Dyer (she/her) is a novelist, anthologist, poet, and literary academic, drawn to dark and monstrous stories. Her debut anthology Being Ace (Page Street YA, 2023) received a starred review from School Library Journal and was named a 2024 Lammy Award Finalist at the Lambda Literary Awards, commemorating “outstanding LGBTQ+ literature from 2023.” Her debut novel Untamed (Prizm Books, 2015) also won the 2015 SIBA award for Best Dystopian Novel.
Madeline also writes romance and light-hearted contemporary fiction as Elin Annalise.
She is represented by Amy Collins at Talcott Notch Literary.
Madeline teaches writing and has a 2:1 BA (hons) degree in English from the University of Exeter and an MFA (distinction) in Creative Writing from Kingston University. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol, where she is researching and writing about traumatized girls and monstrous women in the Gothic, and exploring the intersections between Prehistory and the Gothic.
In 2020, Madeline founded YA Thriller Con, an online celebration of everything thriller, crime, and mystery that ran for three years. YA Thriller Con is currently on hiatus while Madeline focuses on her writing.
She has a herd of Shetland ponies, loves anything ghostly, and can frequently be found exploring wild places. At least one notebook is known to follow her everywhere she goes.
Author Links:
Website: https://madelinedyer.co.uk/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mdyerauthor/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7244204.Madeline_Dyer
Tour Schedule:
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