Meet L.V. Peñalba, Author of “Shapes of Love”

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What happens when fans of a 19-year-old pop star are obsessed with discovering who inspired her hit love songs, but they’re about her favorite love stories, not her own. In L.V. Peñalba’s Shapes of Love, Sasha is aroace-spec, newly famous, and suddenly trapped inside a love story invented by her audience, her record label, and just about everyone around her.

The solution is a fake relationship with an estranged best friend. Naturally, things get complicated. But Shapes of Love is less interested in asking who Sasha will end up with than in challenging the assumption that romantic love is the only path to happiness and somehow more important than love among friends.

Peñalba gets into the fan-culture question that sparked the novel, the aro and ace stories that gave her confidence to write it, and why Sasha deserved a happy ending shaped around what she actually wants. She also offers a reminder worth taping to the nearest mirror: you should never have to break yourself into pieces to fit someone else’s definition of love.

Every LGBTQ+ person has a story that helped them feel seen. What book, movie, TV show, or piece of art made you feel that way growing up, and how did it influence the stories you tell today?

I remember when I first read Loveless by Alice Oseman, and also when Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao was announced. It made me happy to see that people were interested in stories with aro/ace protagonists, which is something I didn’t get to see growing up, and it gave me the confidence to write my own.

What was the moment, person, or question that inspired you to write this story?

Writing Shapes of Love was both a safe space and therapeutic for me in a way. I was frustrated with things I saw around me, like how society tends to ignore or minimize a-spec people’s experiences and struggles. I wanted to challenge the idea that love is a monolith and write a story where an aroace person gets the happy ending she wants, not what society says she should want.

This obsession people have with the “story behind the song” is nothing new in pop music. We see it all the time with stars like Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, the list goes on. You’ve found such a fresh take on telling the real story behind a pop star’s hit music, and you’ve found a way to do it that I think most LGBTQ+ readers can instantly relate to. I’m wondering how you found yourself to this story? Have you personally always been intrigued by “fan culture?” And why was it important to you to center this story on a character who is aro/ace spec?

The spark for this story was me thinking something like: “what if there was a famous singer who was actually aro/ace but people just assumed she was straight? Would her fans create a fairytale? Would her label want to capitalize on it?”

Although Sasha is famous, most of her struggles come down to things happening in her private life, like growing apart from her friends or feeling like everyone’s partnering up and leaving her behind. As an artist, when she almost comes out by accident, she gets a lot of a-phobia online, which also plays a part in her agreeing to the fake relationship. She feels pressured to become this person she’s not. On a personal level, she’s a little lonely, but she’s unsure what her options are because the message echoed in society is that the only way not to be alone long term is to get into a romantic, sexual relationship.

Ultimately, Sasha just wants to live authentically in a world that keeps trying to convince her that there’s something wrong with who she is, which is unfortunately something a lot of queer people have had to face.

If you could leave one note inside every copy of your book for the next LGBTQ+ young person who reads it, what would it say?

That I know it’s not always easy to exist as a queer person these days, but it’s always worth it. That you’re not alone, even if it feels that way sometimes, and I hope your future is filled with happiness. And that you don’t have to break yourself into a million pieces to fit into someone’s definition of love; you can shape love so that it fits you.

Why do you think “Shapes of Love” is such an important book for right now?

I just hope it provides a safe space for readers and helps other aro and ace people feel seen—although Sasha’s experience is just one of many under the aro and ace umbrellas, and hopefully we can have more stories in the coming years showing different aro and/or ace experiences.

What are three books other than your own centering LGBTQ+ characters that you think every person should read?

This question is always so hard for me to answer (only three books?), but here are some books I’ve enjoyed!

Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

Smash or Pass by Birdie Schae