A steamy contemporary romance that is every bit as enjoyable as her debut ... a triumph of feminist fiction, supporting the importance of healthy emotional and physical intimacy and showing how to make the world a better place with love ... sexy and modern and fun, but also thoughtful and authentic. Danan avoids tired stereotypes: Ethan isn’t the least bit squeamish about sex, and Naomi is vulnerable and open when considering their budding romance. There’s a lot at stake for both of these flawed, richly layered characters. For them to love each other, openly and without reserve, is a risk to their professional reputations ... Danan crafts a beautiful arc as Naomi learns to stand in the real world and let her true self shine through, reconciling both her 'superhero' and 'secret' identities, and trusting that Ethan will love all of who she is.
This book was so emotionally raw, funny, hot, and moving. The story touches on themes of sex work stigma and sex positivity, religious practice and faith, and modern intimacy. The romance pairs a badass ice queen heroine with a sweet beta hero. Both the main romance and the individual journeys of the main characters were quite beautiful, and I loved this book almost the entire way through. (The ending was a bit of a clunker for me) ... The sexy scenes are hot, but honestly, what I loved most about this book is the way it successfully captures that early-dating feeling when you meet someone you are super excited about, and how you are trying to learn literally everything about them and kind of smoosh your mind into their mind and your soul into their soul ... I know I’ve spent many words critiquing the ending, but I still have very positive feelings about this book overall. Truthfully, I thought this book was yell-at-your-friends-about-it amazing until the last 90% or so. And it’s not even that I hated the last 10%, it just felt like it belonged to a different book–one that leaned more into typical rom-com tropes instead of one that put so much work into establishing characters and relationships that felt more true-to-life.
Danan excels at imbuing her text with both heart and steam, and the sex-positive, modern spin on faith and intimacy means that Naomi and Ethan’s HEA is fully realized ... Recommended for fans of Christina Lauren and Sally Thorne, as well as fans of the author’s debut.
It's probably safe to say that readers will not have encountered a romance novel quite like The Intimacy Experiment before. It certainly has plenty of the juiciness of The Roommate , but it also has the added, and rather surprising, element of Naomi growing deeper in her Jewish faith and Ethan being challenged in his. Danan’s sexy, thoughtful novel breaks new ground in romance, and I for one am eager to see where this talented writer takes us next.
Ethan and Naomi’s love story explicitly follows the arc of the Modern Intimacy lecture series, but the pacing suffers as a result. Their romance is full of stops and starts, driven by Danan’s choice to have an external structure rather than organic character growth move the plot. Threads are introduced, dropped, and then reappear suddenly. Several times, Naomi and Ethan reveal their emotional states by lecturing to an audience, even if the other isn’t present. It’s ironic that characters committed to intimacy disclose their feelings in long speeches instead of showing them through action or direct communication with their partner; consequently, their relationship feels flat and underdeveloped. The exploration of faith and identity will likely appeal to contemporary romance readers looking for a full-bodied, nuanced treatment of religion that is also nonjudgmental and sex-positive.
