Naomi Grant has built her life around going against the grain. After the sex-positive start-up she cofounded becomes an international sensation, she wants to extend her educational platform to live lecturing. Unfortunately, despite her long list of qualifications, higher ed won’t hire her.
Ethan Cohen has recently received two honors: LA Mag named him one of the city’s hottest bachelors and he became rabbi of his own synagogue. Taking a gamble in an effort to attract more millennials to the faith, the executive board hired Ethan because of his nontraditional background. Unfortunately, his shul is low on both funds and congregants. The board gives him three months to turn things around or else they’ll close the doors of his synagogue for good.
Naomi and Ethan join forces to host a buzzy seminar series on Modern Intimacy, the perfect solution to their problems–until they discover a new one–their growing attraction to each other. They’ve built the syllabus for love’s latest experiment, but neither of them expected they’d be the ones putting it to the test.
I don’t think it lived up to the potential of the concept. The opening didn’t make sense and honestly was totally cringe for someone at a conference to hijack the conversation and inflict her views on everyone else during opening introductions — she thinks she’s being badass by breaking social norms but she’s really being disrespectful. The premise and approach they take to the seminars — doing zero promotion for a celebrity speaker — makes zero sense for either of their goals. Surely they would know enough to put that shit on Facebook.
There was astonishingly little sex for a book about a former sex performer who invests much of her identity in sex positivity and also putting sexuality in other people’s faces. She talks about being non monogamous at one point but they never discuss how that will work in their relationship.
The faith element didn’t do much for me. His reasoning didn’t compel me, but I’m not religious. I didn’t totally see why she became reinvested in her faith — it didn’t explain what she was getting out of it.
The ending didn’t work for me. I see why it appealed to the author but especially Naomi’s actions made no sense at all.
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Read in 2021 – Tracy Durnell mentioned this read on tracydurnell.com.
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