Happy Ace Week, everyone!! No matter where you are on the ace spectrum, you are celebrated this week! And if you are learning about asexuality, we hope that this week will prove helpful.
[image description: a purple square with the text "Happy Ace Week!! October 22nd-28th, 2023." There are illustrations of a rainbow in the asexuality pride flag colors (black, gray, white, purple) and a purple star character with a smiling face. The AVEN logo is in the lower right corner.]
When Locke asked Jude if she could ever love him and her mind was simply just “to be fair I love the man who murdered my parents so… anything is possible!”
Queerplatonic book recs, that actually have QPRs, inspired by me seeing someone listing qpr books that were literally just queer people being friends 🤦♀️
These all have the main characters in queerplatonic relationships, explicitly and/or unambiguously in most cases.
The Thread That Binds
solarpunk-fantasy about queer bookbinding witches, 2/3 MCs are an aroace & an ace in a QPR
Baker Thief
superhero fantasy with a bigender aromantic superhero / demisexual woman QPR
Not Even Bones
YA supernatural trilogy where the main characters initially seem to be developing a romantic relationship, but eventually realise neither actually feel that way, and settle into more or less a QPR (without labels, but it’s pretty clear)
Two Dark Moons
YA fantasy where an arospec girl & ace lizard kid accidentally get fantasy-married & develop a friendship/qpr
The Wolf Among The Wild Hunt
dark fantasy novella with an aroace wolfman & nonbinary knight qpr
Our Bloody Pearl
NA fantasy with a siren & ace pirate, originally marketed as a romance, but it is pretty much a qpr and that’s what the author intended!
The Reckless Kind
historical YA with an aspec girl becoming a family with her best friend and his boyfriend
Fire Becomes Her
YA, 1920s inspired fantasy world, demiro girl breaks free of her relationship and instead ends up in a QPR with a nonbinary transmasc ace.
If It Makes You Happy
YA contemporary about a girl navigating her queerplatonic relationship with her best friend, and a possible new romantic relationship.
Royal Rescue
high fantasy with an amatonormative royal marriage system, where the aroace MC has had enough, rescues himself, and starts to dismantle the system, finding a QPR on the way
The Heretic’s Guide To Homecoming (duology)
slow introspective high fantasy following two characters on a journey, doesn’t explicitly have them define their relationship in a QPR-like way, but undeniably focuses on complex platonic relationships and narratives
Mindtouch
this is one that’s been on my tbr forever - a sort of cozy/slice of life sci-fi that centres a platonic relationship between two aliens, which is quite reminiscent of a QPR. apparently there’s like 5 books now, I’ve only read the first so far!
Archivist Wasp / Firebreak
honorable mention because it’s not explicitly a qpr - but all of the author’s works focus on platonic m/f relationships in a very aspec way, and have absolutely no romance anywhere. one of the central relationships is very much platonic soulmates/ qpr vibes (postapoc ghosty sci-fi/fantasy YA & dystopian anticapitalism)
