A review by lbhreads
Love & Virtue by Diana Reid

3.0

‘love and virtue’ is a campus novel following the friendship of 2 young women in their first year of university in sydney as they grapple with power dynamics, sex, philosophy, privilege, and the lines of consent. 

this book feels like a mixture of ‘my last innocent year’ and ‘thirst for salt’, both in terms of the writing styles and the themes explored. but similarly to how i felt about ‘my last innocent year’, while the premise and commentary is strong, i think the novel was a little ambitious in everything it tried to explore within its 300 pages, making some aspects feel less developed than others. while no author or novel could ever provide clear-cut answers to the themes explored in this book, after reading this i was left with the feeling that this book was trying to say something poignant, but sadly never really got there.