A review by heat_her
With My Body by Nikki Gemmell

4.0

The main theme of With My Body is women’s sexuality and its fluidity–how it can be affected in good and bad ways, and how it changes over time. With My Body is organized into a set of lessons for women, inspired by a Victorian book titled A Woman’s Thoughts About Women, written by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik and published in 1858. This book plays a predominant role in the narrator’s life, and every chapter of With My Body is labeled with a phrase from the Victorian book, then tells a corresponding part of the narrator’s story. I really liked this set-up. In addition, With My Body is written in second person, with the main character of the novel going unnamed; in this way, Gemmell turns the narrator into an Everywoman, which worked very well for me. It was very easy for me to put myself in the narrator’s shoes and get pulled into the story. (I’m a natural empath, though, so this may not be as easy for other readers–sometimes the second person point of view throws readers off.)

Read my review in its entirety on Between the Covers...