Oh, I hate this book with a deep passion. The only reason that kept me reading was to understand why and how much I hated it.
Rewind one month ago: I saw this beautiful book cover at the Berlin bookshop She Said. The cover text promised 'a radical, daring and bracing sex masterpiece'. So, of course i wanted to read it.

The beginning lured me in and i liked the first chapter, but after that i just found it boring and very problematic. The narrator is a young, beautiful, priveleged white woman with nauseating views on sexuality and desperetaly in need of attention. An toxic sexual triangle full of gaslighting, manipulation and humiliation, where only the dominant man fully gets everything he wants - that's not hot at all. (And if you want to tell a story like that, it needs a very different tone.) The whole book felt immature and thoughtless. The plot is paper thin and the characters dull. I didn't have any sympathy for any of them, couldn't care less and was secretly hoping they would all die painfully at the end.

*

"I could watch Nathan and Olivia having sex but watching them kiss made me near sick. Nathan was a skilled kisser, capable of soft control. When they kissed she was a supplicant and he was boundlessly merciful. He was always above her, holding her head, bearing her softly against him. (...)
Come sit with us, Nathan said.
I never felt stranger than in the moments in which I attempted to give Olivia privacy in her transparent love and Nathan saw that I needed reassurance. I didn't want to need it and yet my gratitude toward him threatened my clarity. While he was turned towards Olivia I had a small, precious distance. I could see his body harboring his power. When the beam of his attention fell on me I could only perceive the force of his control, an empatic moon that found me no matter where I stood."