Star Wars: Queen's Shadow

Some days I feel like Star Wars Expanded Universe writers are competing for a Blandest Het Romance in the History of Literature award. It's a major factor in why I DNF Leia: Princess of Alderaan. I'm only 60ish pages into Queen's Shadow but I'm eyerolling into the abyss whenever the guy who's supposed to be Sabé's love interest's name is mentioned. He's had like 2 lines, the only physical description of him is 'pale', but the book keeps acting like this is some major reward or opportunity for Sabé. Like, really? Really? He barely exists as a character so far.

I feel like everyone went gaga over E. K. Johnston writing Kaiden as a love interest for Ahsoka in her titular novel, but when I read it it came across more like a mostly one-sided crush. Similarly, it seems like she's trying to write Saché/Yané, but it's handled so subtly I know people are going to argue that they're moving in together as -just friends-. There's been a couple of explicitly LGBTQ+ characters in the comics and adult novels but most of them have been Imperials and/or villains.

I'm just really really annoyed with heteronormativity at the moment, among my numerous other issues with the new Expanded Universe at the moment. If you're not going to put effort into a romance subplot why fucking bother putting it in the story to begin with?