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mirandacactusreads's review
reflective
sad
4.0
Very weird that this book was marketed as a book about women’s sexual desire! It’s more about surviving rape, and being coerced into sexual situations these women actually didn’t enjoy, being manipulated and controlled, and the way women’s sexuality is turned against them. I liked the book itself but it’s pretty messed up that it’s framed as about desire, like what was the goal with that? And just by nature of it being only about three women, it can’t even come close to encapsulating women’s sexualities and desires so idk!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Grief, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, Eating disorder, Suicidal thoughts, Rape, Suicide, and Death of parent
Minor: Incest
betttyy8's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
2.5
I'm just not entirely sure what the point of this was in the end. I liked the women's stories and thought they were nuanced and some complicated parts of my own experience were articulated by them. However, I feel like making this a nonfiction book and suggesting there's something in here about female desire and sexuality and patriarchy meant I was kind of expecting more reflection/engagement/analysis from the author. I appreciate presenting these women without judgement, that's fundamental and important, but it almost feels like this ends up extending to any meaningful thought about the wider implications that the book wants to be engaging with. I don't know. I liked the women's stories I was just not sure what the author wanted me to know about them and ultimately I feel let down by it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Car accident, Fatphobia, Suicide, Sexual violence, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Toxic relationship, Sexual content, Alcoholism, Self harm, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Rape
Minor: Incest
cesarreads's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Good book, but not about desire as is claimed. How could it be, if a third of it is about literal child abuse? Ro call it that is disgusting and pretty hypocritical. Also didn't enjoy the prologue's notion that men can't control themselves sexually and have to give in to desire no matter what.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Sexual assault, and Rape
Moderate: Vomit and Suicide
Minor: Incest and Addiction
rosalind's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Sexual assault, Adult/minor relationship, and Infidelity
Moderate: Suicide, Incest, Death, Death of parent, and Eating disorder
Minor: Fatphobia
garibae's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Infidelity, Rape, Panic attacks/disorders, Car accident, Adult/minor relationship, Vomit, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual harassment, Incest, Toxic relationship, Death of parent, and Alcoholism
maxihyde's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Incest
sauvageloup's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.5
Rating this book for how much I liked it, versus how well I thought it achieved its purpose, feel like totally different things.
Pros:
- Taddeo definitely has a pretty way with words. Sometimes it hit exactly right and was very astute and/or moving. She weaves the stories together really well and collected all the threads into one big carpet of 'desire in women' which I know from trying to bring fiction plots together AND bringing university essays into a neat but inpactful conclusion is really hard.
- it was definitely thought-provoking. When i couldn't sleep because of my cold, I thought about this book and the women in it, trying to puzzle them out at the same time as my reaction to it, and how it related to my life, my gender.
- I liked very much that Taddeo acknowledged that Black and poor (and other maginalised) women have it much harder. The book wants women to go after their desires without being limited by society, or men, or other women, or shame, or the law. But it does admit this is far easier for some than others, and the women it focuses on in the book are all (to my knowledge) white.
- Some of the parts on desire did ring true to me. Women shamed for wanting sex, or wanting part but not all of it, of the word 'slut' hanging in the air even when it's not said, of being terrified of sex but desperate to abate the loneliness at the same time. Somewhere in there, it did hit a chord at times.
Cons:
- Primarily, I found it hard to relate? or objectively view? this book because of my own feeling around woman-ness. I'm non-binary, I've deliberately rejected being called a 'woman' in whichever places I feel comfortable enough to come out. But in society at large and my own home with my parents, I'm still considered, against my will, to be a woman. I feel so strongly about not being a woman that I've gone out of my way and caused myself pain trying to figure this truth out inside me, and yet I was brought up as one, are viewed as one 90% of the time, and have the body parts of one. So that alone makes any book trying to "cut to the heart" of being a woman very difficult.
- That said, I didn't feel like i could relate to much of what the women were feeling or doing, either in what I'd observed in women around me or in the feminine parts of myself. How much of that is down to my own denial, me not being a woman, me not being observant or experienced or cynical enough, or even me being British not American, I don't know. I had a visceral rejection to many things in each of the women's story's that just said 'that doesn't feel True'. Not the events, of course, I don't doubt the trauma and the awfulness the women went through, but how they reacted to men and the cruelty between women didn't feel true to me. I haven't met women so consumed by men, or women being so cruel. Maybe I'm naive. (but then there's all the reviewers saying that the book 'gets to the heart of who we are' and i'm just like ????
- I also felt that the book was trying to be brand new and yet didn't feel that original at all. It said here, look at these women's pain and feel shocked and angry on their behalf. I've read other books that talk brutally about rape and abuse (Notes to self by Emilie Pine and Escape by Carolyn Jessop) in real life as well as the struggles of parents who didn't do right, who didn't protect their daughters. I suppose the fact that Maggie wasn't believed in her rape trial shows that these stories need to be out there, but I feel it's preaching to the choir sometimes. But I don't know how much is me trying to be like, I'm different, I wouldn't act like that, I would believe the women and support them and be happy for their successes and I know the world is complicated and wouldn't judge them for having an affair, or being too brash, and goddammit i'd say something if someone got an eating disorder. But there's always the doubt of, would I actually?
- Sometimes the flowery writing was just A Bit Much, and sometimes it was painfully blunt. Both of which I could more used to as the book went on, but it felt like unnecessary excess at times, in crudity and in flowery-ness. (But I think maybe Taddeo was aiming for that - to try to capture something bigger than the literal, and to be brutally honest. So here's where what i like and can manage to read splits away from reviewing whether or not Taddeo wrote a good book.)
- There was also the problem of the assumption that to be a woman you must experience sexual desire. That they all do. That it's normal. Impying that it's not normal if you don't. If you're asexual for example. I don't know, perhaps I'm expecting too much. I know this focuses on three allosexual women who like men, but when a book is claiming to be trying to include the whole of female desire, i felt it could have at least touched on women who don't want sex, or on women who have a penis. (also the implication that men are wrong if they don't want sex?? Lina's damp-fish of a husband, who's described as 'smirking' after the therapist validifies his desire not to want to kiss. Like, he *is* valid. He's just wrong for Lina, as she's wrong for him.)
- Finally, I feel uneasily like Taddeo might be the type to be a terf. I can't find anything that suggests so, but the literal one mention of queer people in her book (a gay man) is followed immediately by him acting badly. There's no discussion of gender beyond the binary, and Sloane's experiences as a queer woman seem primarily to be at her husband's bequest and not hers. Taddeo talks about women's desire, but never about women's desire for other women.
So yeah. Complicated.
Pros:
- Taddeo definitely has a pretty way with words. Sometimes it hit exactly right and was very astute and/or moving. She weaves the stories together really well and collected all the threads into one big carpet of 'desire in women' which I know from trying to bring fiction plots together AND bringing university essays into a neat but inpactful conclusion is really hard.
- it was definitely thought-provoking. When i couldn't sleep because of my cold, I thought about this book and the women in it, trying to puzzle them out at the same time as my reaction to it, and how it related to my life, my gender.
- I liked very much that Taddeo acknowledged that Black and poor (and other maginalised) women have it much harder. The book wants women to go after their desires without being limited by society, or men, or other women, or shame, or the law. But it does admit this is far easier for some than others, and the women it focuses on in the book are all (to my knowledge) white.
- Some of the parts on desire did ring true to me. Women shamed for wanting sex, or wanting part but not all of it, of the word 'slut' hanging in the air even when it's not said, of being terrified of sex but desperate to abate the loneliness at the same time. Somewhere in there, it did hit a chord at times.
Cons:
- Primarily, I found it hard to relate? or objectively view? this book because of my own feeling around woman-ness. I'm non-binary, I've deliberately rejected being called a 'woman' in whichever places I feel comfortable enough to come out. But in society at large and my own home with my parents, I'm still considered, against my will, to be a woman. I feel so strongly about not being a woman that I've gone out of my way and caused myself pain trying to figure this truth out inside me, and yet I was brought up as one, are viewed as one 90% of the time, and have the body parts of one. So that alone makes any book trying to "cut to the heart" of being a woman very difficult.
- That said, I didn't feel like i could relate to much of what the women were feeling or doing, either in what I'd observed in women around me or in the feminine parts of myself. How much of that is down to my own denial, me not being a woman, me not being observant or experienced or cynical enough, or even me being British not American, I don't know. I had a visceral rejection to many things in each of the women's story's that just said 'that doesn't feel True'. Not the events, of course, I don't doubt the trauma and the awfulness the women went through, but how they reacted to men and the cruelty between women didn't feel true to me. I haven't met women so consumed by men, or women being so cruel. Maybe I'm naive. (but then there's all the reviewers saying that the book 'gets to the heart of who we are' and i'm just like ????
- I also felt that the book was trying to be brand new and yet didn't feel that original at all. It said here, look at these women's pain and feel shocked and angry on their behalf. I've read other books that talk brutally about rape and abuse (Notes to self by Emilie Pine and Escape by Carolyn Jessop) in real life as well as the struggles of parents who didn't do right, who didn't protect their daughters. I suppose the fact that Maggie wasn't believed in her rape trial shows that these stories need to be out there, but I feel it's preaching to the choir sometimes. But I don't know how much is me trying to be like, I'm different, I wouldn't act like that, I would believe the women and support them and be happy for their successes and I know the world is complicated and wouldn't judge them for having an affair, or being too brash, and goddammit i'd say something if someone got an eating disorder. But there's always the doubt of, would I actually?
- Sometimes the flowery writing was just A Bit Much, and sometimes it was painfully blunt. Both of which I could more used to as the book went on, but it felt like unnecessary excess at times, in crudity and in flowery-ness. (But I think maybe Taddeo was aiming for that - to try to capture something bigger than the literal, and to be brutally honest. So here's where what i like and can manage to read splits away from reviewing whether or not Taddeo wrote a good book.)
- There was also the problem of the assumption that to be a woman you must experience sexual desire. That they all do. That it's normal. Impying that it's not normal if you don't. If you're asexual for example. I don't know, perhaps I'm expecting too much. I know this focuses on three allosexual women who like men, but when a book is claiming to be trying to include the whole of female desire, i felt it could have at least touched on women who don't want sex, or on women who have a penis. (also the implication that men are wrong if they don't want sex?? Lina's damp-fish of a husband, who's described as 'smirking' after the therapist validifies his desire not to want to kiss. Like, he *is* valid. He's just wrong for Lina, as she's wrong for him.)
- Finally, I feel uneasily like Taddeo might be the type to be a terf. I can't find anything that suggests so, but the literal one mention of queer people in her book (a gay man) is followed immediately by him acting badly. There's no discussion of gender beyond the binary, and Sloane's experiences as a queer woman seem primarily to be at her husband's bequest and not hers. Taddeo talks about women's desire, but never about women's desire for other women.
So yeah. Complicated.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Sexual violence, Body shaming, Eating disorder, Adult/minor relationship, Cursing, Gaslighting, Grief, Panic attacks/disorders, Toxic relationship, Suicide, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Rape, Death, Death of parent, Bullying, Car accident, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Emotional abuse and Alcoholism
Minor: Biphobia, Incest, Mental illness, and Acephobia/Arophobia
maess's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Vomit, Car accident, Misogyny, Alcoholism, Grief, Eating disorder, Death of parent, Sexism, and Suicide
Minor: Incest
korinnagarcia's review
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.0
This book felt like I was sitting by these women at a coffee shop and I was eavesdropping on each of their stories. At some point you have to leave and you don't get to hear the rest of their stories or how they turned out in the end. At
times it felt uncomfortable and too personal to be reading but I related to bits of each of their lives, I felt their pain,
their joy, their longing. None of these women's stories are solved or come to a happy ending. There's not much closure at the end and while I've seen a few reviews see this as a negative, I don't. That's real life. I applaud these women for sharing their stories and I love
Lisa Taddeo's writing but this book left me feeling almost hungover and mournful. I don't want to take away from the other women's stories but I found myself rushing to get to Maggie's parts. I feel like Maggie deserves her own book.
times it felt uncomfortable and too personal to be reading but I related to bits of each of their lives, I felt their pain,
their joy, their longing. None of these women's stories are solved or come to a happy ending. There's not much closure at the end and while I've seen a few reviews see this as a negative, I don't. That's real life. I applaud these women for sharing their stories and I love
Lisa Taddeo's writing but this book left me feeling almost hungover and mournful. I don't want to take away from the other women's stories but I found myself rushing to get to Maggie's parts. I feel like Maggie deserves her own book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Death of parent, Eating disorder, and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Grief, Infidelity, Misogyny, Rape, and Self harm
Minor: Incest
okfrog's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
Had a long convo with Zohra after I finished this and also watched clips of the trial on YouTube. I am feeling like this is hopeless and women truly are treated as second class citizens. and we need to protect the children!! :( Cannot believe he is still teaching and coaching girl's golf
Content Warnings
Moderate: Eating disorder, Rape, Child abuse, and Suicide
Minor: Incest