It’s an interesting book, very well written and totally not for me lol. I don’t think it’s a bad book but I’m clearly not the intended audience. Hogarth is a woman writing to a very woman audience and while i intellectually understand some of the themes in the book, I think being a straight guy kind of blunts their full impact.
That being said, Hogarth is a great writer who’s weird way of threading lines of internal dialogue through 3rd person descriptions of scenery or other characters speaking is suitably jarring and forcefully hits home the compulsive nature of Dani’s thoughts.
I personally didn’t like any of the characters expect maybe Clark. Maybe that’s a me problem. It probably is. Don’t get me wrong, Dani is a great character but not very likeable and in fact quite selfish to me at lest. But she’s a fantastic unreliable narrator.
I’m not quite sure what to make of the book. I guess I fundamentally disagree with the utopian dream scenario the author imagines will happen with legalized sex work. But that’s okay.
Maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there but it does feel like she leaves the door open to the idea that this won’t necessarily turn into some huge success and the evidence of Brandon and Renata and Brandon and Dani’s somewhat toxic relationship puts paid to idea that this is all healing men. And is in fact somewhat dangerous even beneath the happy and respectable veneer.
Beyond that, I’ll quibble with the author’s disinterest in reckoning with what becoming a sex worker would mean for your relationship. I mean listen, cuckolding is a very common kink among men but just ending the book with
“Honey are you really okay with me being a “healer” too?”
“No problem with it at all my dear! In fact I find it hot!”
It’s not impossible. It just feels rushed and somewhat cheap of an ending. I didn’t really know who Clark was at the end of the book because Dani was so unreliable. So I’m not sure how it should feel about their apparent reconciliation. It’s nice I suppose but it’s hard to feel any impact on me.
The biggest issue I have with sex utopia the author seems to believe in, is it requires a woman if saintly nature in the form of Renata to run an ethical, somehow STD free whorehouse, without any coercion, violence or abuse of the women. The more their dream to normalize it becomes a reality, the more you’ll see unethical, cutthroat businessmen join the game who won’t take the same care Renata did.
If it’s truly legalized you’ll still have ethical problems of its own that this utopia seems to avoid. What happens when a worker decides to back out of a contact with a client for a particular act? Can they sue them for money in civil claims court? Can they force them to perform it? Is that really helping sex workers of America lol?
I digress though. Very interesting book I’ll be thinking about for awhile.
by nowlan101