No Limit on Love

Eighteen-year-old Dan, struggling with climate anxiety after a severe storm causes damage and power outages in Ottawa, joins a school clean-up crew and meets Levi, the student who organized it. Both of them are questioning their gender identity, and, as they fall in love, Dan finds the courage to come out as non-binary to her family and introduce them to Levi. On a surprise date to ride horses at a ranch, Dan and Levi are caught in a freak storm but manage to return with the horses unscathed. Levi is introduced to Dan’s circle of friends as they become a couple.

Part of the “Real Love” series of LGBTQ+ themed fiction for young adults, No Limit on Love captures the complexity and anxiety of 2020s dating, set against a backdrop of all-too-real climate disaster, the Ottawa trucker protests and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Narrated by Dan, the story is told in short sentences full of first-person emotion and uncertainty that will likely hold appeal in what is still a fairly slim roster of Canadian gender exploration fiction. As social reflection, it hits the right notes, presenting Dan as a sympathetic character immersed in a changing world where even being playfully called “Dude” evokes a small thrill.

But in hitting those notes, the book is overly reliant on uninspiring platitudes, caricatured teen expressions, and stilted and unnatural language. Describing wearing rather masculine outfits, Dan notes, “I’d rather be mistaken for a lesbian than a basic white girl any day.” Dan’s therapist, Fiza, is presented as wearing “bright, cheerful head scarves to fulfill her religious and cultural obligations.” One friend talks about her cat getting lost in the storm, turning up “looking bedraggled”. Levi says to Dan, “I like you. And I’m trying to demonstrate that. But I don’t know what your boundaries are.” When Levi offers to drive Dan home, he excuses the offer as “the most heteronormative thing I’ve ever said”. Dan’s mother is presented as hopelessly out of touch when she inquires about Levi, saying, “He sounds like a king. Isn’t that what you kids say about people who are slaying at life?”

The scene where Dan asks her (their) family to start using they/them pronouns is well paced as are the differing reactions of the struggling parents and skeptical brother. But there seems little to precipitate the sudden courage, other than the awkward but charming blossoming relationship between Dan and Levi. And as that is occurring, the book veers into extraordinarily cringe-worthy, if not inappropriate, territory: a scene unfolds where Dan and Levi suggestively share his lunchtime dolmades (Greek stuffed grape leaves), with Dan intoning, “I popped the whole thing in my mouth, because it was either go big or go home.” The scene is reprised in the book’s finale in front of Dan’s friends. (The discomfort actually begins early in the text where Dan notices an unexplained “stain on my jeans” during a session with Fiza and tries to cover it up).

In the end, No Limit on Love is the young adult LGBTQ+ version of pulp romance, no better and no worse, with a slightly suggestive tone thrown in that is not inappropriate from a sexual education point of view but still seems gratuitous and off-putting. Given the times, it may be a useful addition to an inclusive YA collection, but it’s far from the best example of either romance or queer-themed narrative literature.