Perfect Rhythm Review | Jae | Is It Worth Reading?

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Verdict: Still the best-known asexual heroine in sapphic romance and a genuinely tender hometown love story, undercut by a didactic streak and one acephobic line the narrative never takes back.

Best for: Readers who want explicit, modelled consent and boundary negotiation at the centre of a romance, and who are interested in intimacy built almost entirely without sex.

Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — romance.io’s “open door”, but one scene, with a skippable in-text warning)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5 — a 4.23 Goodreads average across 3,493 ratings, with the sharpest critical record of any romance on our list)

Tropes: Return to hometown, celebrity and ordinary person, slow burn, caretaker proximity, asexual heroine, opposites attract, forced proximity, small town, dual POV, HEA.

Perfect Rhythm is Jae’s contemporary romance and the first of the Fair Oaks duology, published by Ylva Publishing on 5 September 2017, set in a small Missouri town its protagonist left fourteen years earlier, and built on the collision between Leontyne Blake — a burned-out pop star who comes home when her father has a stroke — and Holly Drummond, the nurse caring for him, who is asexual and homoromantic and entirely uninterested in being anybody’s fan.

It holds a 4.23 average across 3,493 Goodreads ratings and a 4.09 across 807 StoryGraph reviews, and it won the 2018 GCLS Goldie for Contemporary Romance in the long-novel category. It also has the richest critical record of any book on our sapphic fiction list — and almost all of that criticism comes from within the asexual community, which makes it worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Perfect Rhythm About?

This is contemporary romance in the return-to-hometown mode, and what makes it unusual is where the conflict sits. There is no villain, no rival and no misunderstanding. The obstacle is that one woman experiences sexual attraction and the other does not, and neither of them has a script for what a relationship between them looks like. Everything else — the stroke, the estranged father, the career Leo has stopped enjoying — is arranged around that negotiation. StoryGraph readers register how completely: 81% experience the book as character-driven against 1% who call it plot-driven, the most lopsided figure on our entire list.

Leo is introduced through exhaustion: famous, wealthy, tired of performing a persona, and fourteen years estranged from a father who could not accept her. Holly is introduced through competence and boundaries — she is good at her job, she is not impressed by celebrity, and she has been dumped before by women who thought asexuality was a phase. The novel runs in third person past tense across both viewpoints, weighted toward Leo, and that weighting is one of the things critics take issue with.

What Makes This Sapphic Slow-Burn Romance Work

• Consent modelled on the page: The most-praised element by a distance. These two women talk about what they want, state boundaries plainly and check in, and readers name it as the reason they recommend the book.
• Intimacy without heat: The tension is high and the sexual content is nearly absent, and readers repeatedly describe the closeness as more affecting than more explicit books manage.
• Holly’s interiority: The dual viewpoint means asexuality is experienced from inside rather than explained from outside, which is what a large share of ace readers say they had never seen before.
• The father plot: The stroke, the caregiving and the estrangement carry real weight — 82% of StoryGraph readers mark the book emotional, which is high for a book this quiet.
• Character work: 91% of StoryGraph readers report strong character development, one of the highest figures on our list.

Book Synopsis

Leontyne Blake has spent fourteen years becoming someone else — a pop star with a persona, a schedule and a growing certainty that she does not want to do this any more. She has not been back to Fair Oaks, Missouri since she left, and she has not spoken properly to her father since he made it clear what he thought of her.

Then he has a stroke, and she goes home. Waiting there is Holly Drummond, the nurse her mother hired, who is calm, direct, unbothered by Leo’s fame, and completely uninterested in the flirtation Leo deploys by reflex. Holly is asexual. She has explained this to women before and watched them decide it was a problem to be solved.

What follows is a slow accumulation of ordinary things — meals, physiotherapy, a piano nobody has played in years — and a friendship that neither woman is willing to name. The question the book spends its second half on is not whether they want each other. It is whether two people who want different things can build something without one of them giving up what she is.

My Review

The consent writing is the reason this book still gets recommended nine years on. Leo and Holly negotiate everything out loud: what is welcome, what is not, what each of them means by a word the other has heard differently. That sounds clinical and it is the opposite — the talking is where the intimacy lives, and it makes the physical scenes, when they come, feel like decisions rather than inevitabilities. Very little romance in any orientation does this, and it is why readers who have no personal stake in the asexuality plot still name this book as a model.

The second strength is the dual viewpoint, which is doing more work than it looks like. Because you spend time inside Holly’s head, her asexuality is a way of being in the world rather than a fact about her that Leo has to process. You get her irritation at being asked to explain herself, her wariness about a woman who is used to getting what she wants, and the specific tiredness of having had this conversation before. That is the difference between representation and exposition, and when the book is working it is on Holly’s pages.

Where it struggles is didacticism, and this is the dominant complaint rather than my own impatience — and it comes from ace and allosexual readers alike, for opposite reasons. Asexuality is defined and redefined repeatedly in dialogue and interiority, so pages that should be building attraction are spent on explanation; one reviewer described the effect as a way to explain asexuality to allosexuals rather than a novel. Stacked on that is a more serious objection that I do not think the book answers. Early on Leo asks whether Holly was abused into being asexual, and privately wonders whether she could really date an asexual woman, and the narrative moves past both without her ever acknowledging that either was harmful. Multiple ace reviewers name this as the thing that stopped them recommending it, and at least two say plainly that they wanted an apology the book never gives. Third, the pacing genuinely drags — 30% of StoryGraph readers call it slow, several report not engaging until nearly halfway, and whole days are skipped in ways that disorient.

The most contested passage is the one explicit scene, and I am not going to pretend the community has settled it. A number of ace readers read it as Holly abandoning a boundary, and one described the aftertaste as the suggestion that if you wait patiently you can eventually sleep with the asexual. Against that, other ace readers praise the book for exactly the opposite — that Holly is never fixed by sex and never pressured into it, and that a book allowing an asexual character to choose physical intimacy on her own terms is not the same as curing her. Jae puts an in-text content warning at the head of that chapter so it can be skipped entirely, which is a genuinely thoughtful piece of craft. Both readings are honestly held; do not go in expecting a consensus.

My honest note: A landmark for asexual representation in sapphic romance that has aged into a book worth arguing with rather than simply recommending. If you want consent and boundaries modelled better than almost anywhere else, read it; if unretracted acephobia from a protagonist will spoil a romance for you, know that it is there.

Element	In Perfect Rhythm
Central relationship	Leontyne “Leo” Blake & Holly Drummond — a burned-out pop star and the asexual, homoromantic nurse caring for her father
Core tropes	Return to hometown, celebrity and ordinary person, slow burn, caretaker proximity, asexual heroine, opposites attract
Setting	Fair Oaks, Missouri — the small town Leo left fourteen years earlier
Heat level	3/5 by romance.io, but in practice one explicit scene with a skippable in-text warning
Series	Fair Oaks book 1 of 2 — complete with Not the Marrying Kind (2019); each is a standalone couple
Content notes	Acephobia including from the protagonist, homophobia, parental illness and stroke, parental death, grief, coming out, rejection because of asexuality, drug use

How Spicy Is Perfect Rhythm?

A 3/5 by romance.io’s rating, and the practical reality needs stating because the number misleads. There is one explicit scene in the entire novel, it arrives late, and Jae places a content warning at the head of that chapter so readers who would rather skip it can — a fact corroborated by four independent reviewers. One romance site grades the book as closed door despite that scene, which is a fair description of its texture. StoryGraph puts sexual content only at the moderate tier, below acephobia and death of a parent. Nobody reads this book for heat, and the tension is high anyway.

The element worth flagging in advance is acephobia, which StoryGraph lists in the graphic tier — and note that some of it comes from the protagonist rather than from a villain. Reviewers also single out an analogy Holly uses to explain asexuality, comparing it to not liking chocolate, as a misrepresentation that conflates orientation with preference. No kink is flagged by any source. For the same band on this site, Here We Go Again sits at 3/5 with a comparable single-scene structure, and Fingersmith is the historical equivalent.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want consent and boundaries negotiated explicitly on the page, you are interested in asexuality written from the inside, you like quiet character-driven romance, and you do not need heat to feel tension.

You may want to skip it if: a novel that repeatedly stops to define its own subject will lose you, a protagonist’s unretracted acephobia would spoil the romance, slow pacing with unmarked time skips frustrates you, or you want the love interest as fully drawn as the narrator.

In short: a genuinely important romance that is also, by the account of the community it represents, an imperfect one.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

Nine years on, this book occupies a specific and slightly unusual place: it is the title people name when asked for asexual representation in sapphic romance, and it is also the title the asexual community has spent nine years arguing about. It won the 2018 GCLS Goldie for Contemporary Romance in the long-novel category, verified at the awarding body, and per Jae’s own site it also took an IPPY bronze, an eLit silver, two second-place Rainbow Awards and three first places at I Heart SapphFic in 2023 — those last ones sourced from the author rather than from each awarding body. It was not a Lambda Literary finalist. There are no trade reviews, because Ylva does not submit to them. The most newsworthy recent item is a Rainbow Crate special-edition hardcover set of both Fair Oaks books, announced for 1 May 2026; we could not confirm whether it has shipped, so treat availability as unverified.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): First, and stated by allosexual readers over and over, is that it taught them something without lecturing — the recurring formulation is that Jae explained asexuality well and was not preachy, which is precisely the opposite of the dominant complaint and worth holding both of at once. Second is intimacy achieved without high heat: readers describe the closeness as more affecting than explicit books manage. Third is the explicit, modelled consent and boundary negotiation, praised by reviewers who read very widely in the genre. Fourth is the dual viewpoint letting Holly’s asexuality be experienced rather than described. Fifth is the father, the stroke and the estrangement, which several readers rate as the strongest emotional thread. Sixth is representational courage in a subgenre that had almost nothing like it in 2017. Seventh, noted by an ace reviewer who gave the book only three stars, is its depiction of queerplatonic relationship possibilities.

What readers argue about and complain about: Didacticism, above everything, and the mechanism is that asexuality gets defined and redefined in dialogue and interiority until the exposition crowds out the attraction; one reader said the romance and chemistry became a non-factor because the topic kept being restated. Second, and the most serious, is Leo’s on-page acephobia going unretracted — she asks whether Holly was abused into being asexual and privately questions whether she could date an asexual woman, and the narrative never has her acknowledge either as harmful. Multiple ace reviewers name this as disqualifying, and two explicitly wanted an apology the book does not provide. Third is the explicit scene, discussed above, which a substantial group reads as a boundary abandoned and a reward for patience — while other ace readers praise the same scene for refusing to fix or pressure Holly. That disagreement is real and unresolved. Fourth is pacing: 30% of StoryGraph readers call it slow, several report not engaging until nearly halfway, and whole days vanish between scenes. Fifth is that the estrangement and illness subplot is emotionally underplayed given fourteen years of silence. Sixth, moderate: Holly herself is less developed than Leo, which several reviewers attribute to the narrative’s Leo weighting.

The series question everyone should ask first: Book one is a complete romance with an HEA and requires nothing else. Fair Oaks is finished at two books — Not the Marrying Kind (2019) follows a different couple in the same town — and no third has been announced. If Jae is new to you, the useful thing to know is that she is one of the most prolific authors in sapphic romance and that this is the one with the awards and the argument attached; her catalogue is otherwise mostly conventional in its heat and structure, so do not treat Perfect Rhythm as representative of what you will get next.

The audiobook is narrated by Angela Dawe and runs 11 hours 24 minutes from Tantor Media, and she handles the quiet register well — this is a book of conversations rather than set pieces, and it suits listening.

Prefer audio? Listen to Perfect Rhythm on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Perfect Rhythm have a happy ending?

Yes. It is a genre romance with a full HEA for Leo and Holly, and the estrangement with Leo’s father is resolved alongside it.

How explicit is it?

A 3/5 by romance.io’s rating, but there is only one explicit scene in the whole novel and Jae puts a content warning at the head of that chapter so it can be skipped. One romance site classifies the book as closed door despite it.

Is the asexual representation good?

Contested, and the criticism comes from within the ace community. The consent modelling and Holly’s interiority are widely praised; Leo’s unretracted acephobia and the chocolate analogy used to explain asexuality are widely criticised. Read the arguments before you decide.

Does Holly stop being asexual?

No. She is asexual at the end as at the beginning, and reviewers who praise the book emphasise that she is never fixed or pressured. Some ace readers still read the late intimate scene as a boundary given up; others read it as a choice she makes freely.

Is it part of a series?

Fair Oaks book 1 of 2, completed by Not the Marrying Kind (2019), which follows a different couple. Each stands alone and no third book has been announced.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes. Angela Dawe narrates the Tantor Media edition at 11 hours 24 minutes.

If You Loved Perfect Rhythm, Read These Next

Try Here We Go Again for another hometown romance built around a parent’s illness at the same restrained heat; Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea if what you valued was two people communicating instead of manufacturing conflict; and Hotel Queens for the other great Ylva title on this list, at considerably more heat. More in Contemporary Lesbian Romance and across our Book Reviews.

The Bottom Line

Perfect Rhythm set out to write a romance in which the obstacle is two women wanting different kinds of closeness, and three things carry it: consent and boundaries modelled better than almost anywhere in the genre, an asexual heroine written from inside her own head, and a caregiving plot that gives a quiet book real weight. Three things hold it back: exposition that keeps interrupting the attraction, a protagonist whose acephobia is never taken back, and pacing that a third of readers experience as slow. It remains the reference point for asexual representation in sapphic romance, and it is worth reading the community’s arguments about it as you go. Check Perfect Rhythm on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

We rank Perfect Rhythm at 3.9/5 — a Goldie-winning landmark for asexual representation that its own community reads with real reservations.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 3.9/5

• ✓ 4.23 average across 3,493 Goodreads ratings
• ✓ Winner, 2018 GCLS Goldie for Contemporary Romance
• ✓ The reference title for asexual sapphic representation
• ✓ Sustained criticism from within the ace community

Romance ★★★★☆ 4/5

• ✓ Consent and boundaries negotiated explicitly on the page
• ✓ Slow burn built on conversation rather than obstacle
• ✓ Clear HEA that does not require Holly to change
• ✓ Leo’s early acephobia is never taken back

Characters ★★★★☆ 4.1/5

• ✓ 91% of StoryGraph readers report strong development
• ✓ Holly’s asexuality is experienced, not explained
• ✓ 87% find the cast loveable
• ✓ Reviewers say Holly is less developed than Leo

Writing ★★★★☆ 3.7/5

• ✓ Quiet, plain prose that suits the subject
• ✓ An in-text skippable warning on the explicit chapter
• ✓ 81% of readers experience it as character-driven
• ✓ Didacticism is the single most repeated complaint

Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.2/5

• ✓ 82% of StoryGraph readers mark it emotional
• ✓ The stroke and caregiving thread lands hard
• ✓ 54% mark it hopeful alongside that
• ✓ The fourteen-year estrangement is underplayed

Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5

• ✓ romance.io files it as open door
• ✓ One explicit scene, flagged so it can be skipped
• ✓ StoryGraph logs sexual content at moderate tier only
• ✓ That scene is the book’s most contested passage

Ending ★★★★☆ 4/5

• ✓ HEA reached without either woman being changed
• ✓ The father storyline resolves alongside the romance
• ✓ Book one stands alone within a completed duology
• ✓ Some ace readers read the resolution as a compromise

Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.8/5

• ✓ Frequently returned to as a consent reference
• ✓ Widely cited in asexual reading recommendations
• ✓ The conversations reward a second pass
• ✓ The explanatory passages are slower knowing them

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