Finding Your Feet

November 21, 2016
The second (after Blank Spaces) in Lennox’s Toronto Connections quartet does an admirable job of building a community in which asexuality sits easily under the LGBTQ umbrella, filling a niche by including an asexual-sexual romance in which the drama doesn’t stem from that mismatch. Evie Whitmore takes a holiday in Toronto to meet friends from an online asexual social group and gets roped into preparing a routine for a dance contest for Pride as the partner of Tyler Davis. Though it’s obvious that their dance connection is more than friendly, Tyler’s previous experience with dating an abusive dance partner makes him wary of opening his heart. The giggly focus on revealing romantic feelings to your friends and your crush, and Evie’s shy admission that sex isn’t entirely off the table, give the story a YA feel, more high school than 20-something. Though the writing is run-of-the-mill, readers hungry for representation will be pleased, and traditional romance readers who like secular romances with more sweet than heat will want to pick it up too.

February 1, 2017
An unusual romance between an asexual woman and a transgender man who find themselves thrown together during Toronto's Pride Week.In a rare impulsive move, Evie Whitmore decides to visit Toronto at the invitation of Gaybeard, aka Sarah, a friend she met in a Tumblr fandom. Evie plans to relocate to Toronto from England in a few months' time to start her master's degree and is curious about life in the Queen City. In a fairly thin plot, Evie winds up being partnered with Sarah's friend Tyler to train for a dance contest during Toronto Pride. Despite a rocky start, which seems designed mostly to throw up an artificial barrier, Evie and Tyler share an irresistible magnetic draw. Over an intense week of training, as their comfort with the routine reflects their growing comfort together, they come to respect and like one another. Professional dancer Tyler, a biracial trans man, is in recovery from a toxic relationship, and novice Evie, who's asexual, or ace, is trying to figure out how to be her apolitical self in the midst of a group of committed queer activists. It's common in romance for dance to serve as a way to express feelings, but Tyler's choreography itself is fundamentally nonbinary (picture the famous scene in the film Dirty Dancing both with and without the gender roles reversed). In this, her second Toronto Connections novel (Blank Spaces, 2016), which stands alone but is even more effective as a sequel, Lennox continues to explore contemporary romance through the lenses of gender and sexual orientation. By portraying a mostly queer community, Lennox is able to center LBTQIA experiences in all their diversity. But, although Evie's sexual identity requires some explaining, these characters are not defined by their gender and sexual identities. Readers will enjoy getting to know Tyler and Evie as complex, whole persons. A whirl of a sweet story that serves as a solid bridge between installments of an unusually diverse contemporary romance series.

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