The Intimacy Experiment
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3.9 • 19 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“Danan is becoming a go-to author.”—New York Times Book Review
Naomi and Ethan will test the boundaries of love in this provocative romance from the author of the ground-breaking debut, The Roommate.
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 nominated him as one of the city's hottest bachelors and he became rabbi of his own synagogue. Low on both funds and congregants, the executive board of Ethan's new shul hired him with the hopes that his nontraditional background will attract more millennials to the faith. They've given 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A rabbi and a porn star turned sex educator walk into a classroom: it sounds like the start of a joke, but it's the intriguing basis for the mostly charming latest from Danan (The Roommate). When Naomi Grant and Ethan Cohen cross paths at a teaching conference, Ethan proposes they work together on a seminar in modern intimacy at his synagogue. To a young rabbi with a shrinking (and aging) congregation, Naomi's charisma and expertise look like a godsend to entice new members. To Naomi, who associates organized religion with shame, Rabbi Ethan's model looks, sweet demeanor, and commitment to his faith spell danger. So though she's been searching for an opportunity to put her master's in social psychology to use, her initial answer is no. Though Naomi and Ethan eventually make an excellent team, external resistance and internal conflicts continually get in the way, and some of the conflict doesn't entirely gel. Naomi's bravado masks lingering hurts over being shamed for her sexuality as a teen, and the logic of how that formative experience led to Naomi's career in adult entertainment veers on cliched rather than convincing. Still the original setup and endearing characters largely make up for the flaws of this slow-burning romance.
Customer Reviews
Inconsistent: risky in a new sense but didn’t pay off
Listen, I love a good story with an attempt at spinning old clichés into new tropes, but this book lacked in character consistency, including their arcs. There are also way too many metaphors, too cheesy and just as inconsistent as the characters’ personalities and development.
After reading this book’s predecessor, which was wonderfully tense, sexy and funny, The Intimacy Experiment took many risky, different pathways, but this still led to a predictable story, which was drawn out to an unsatisfying slow burn with a hurried ending that showed that our strong-headed heroine could be—and I’ll use a simile from the book—flipped like a pancake.
The only saving grace was being able to read about the characters from the first book in the series.