Animal Instinct

by Amy Shearn

An NPR Books We Love 2025

One of Brooklyn Public Library’s Books We Love 2025

The world has stopped. But Rachel is just getting started…

It’s spring of 2020 and Rachel Bloomstein—mother of three, recent divorcée, and Brooklynite—is stuck inside. But her newly awakened sexual desire and lust for a new life refuse to be contained. Leaning on her best friend Lulu to show her the ropes, Rachel dips a toe in the online dating world, leading to park dates with younger men, flirtations with beautiful women, and actual, in-person sex. None of them, individually, are perfect . . . hence her rotation.

But what if one person could perfectly cater to all her emotional needs? 
Driven by this possibility, Rachel creates Frankie, the AI chatbot she programs with all the good parts of dating in middle age . . . and some of the bad. But as Rachel plays with her fantasy to her heart’s content, she begins to realize she can’t reprogram her ex-husband, her children, her friends, or the roster of paramours that’s grown unwieldy. Perhaps real life has more in store for Rachel than she could ever program for herself.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, LGBT, Audiobook, Science Fiction, Adult

279 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 18, 2025

About the author

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of 5 novels: How Far Is the Ocean from Here, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, Unseen City, Dear Edna Sloane, and Animal Instinct.

Reviews

[Mostly Sapphic Books · Rating 1 out of 5]

“What a clever observation she was making about dating and love, lah-dee-dah, look at her.”

Great concept, but the execution fell flat.

If you’re planning to read this for the sci-fi element: Don’t. There isn’t one. The depiction of even modern technology throughout this novel is laughable. Rachel wants to create the perfect person using AI, but her life-changing app is the most boring, standard, unimpressive chatbot that existed long before 2020 when this novel takes place. Rachel tells us her chatbot has this wonderful personality, but we absolutely don’t see that on the page. One person who knows about the bot is freaked out by how human it sounds, but it literally sounds like a customer support chatbot. We have those in modern life. The only other “sci-fi” element is very small, comes in at the end, and is obviously not actually the product of magical or scientific creation. This book should not be labeled Science Fiction. Seeing that tag on the Goodreads page made me think this was going to be a very different story.

The character writing also isn’t very strong, which is a shame in a character-driven novel. Rachel didn’t feel like a middle-aged woman; she felt like a stereotype of a middle-aged woman who talked like a thirty-year-old – and not a very smart one at that, despite her telling us that she’s a “tech genius” at her job where we barely get details into what she actually does for a living. In fact all of these characters are stereotypes. The ex-husband is the most gaslight-y, inattentive, two-dimensional ex-husband type you can imagine, and her best friend Lulu is just a woman she meets for drinks and gossip. Rachel’s lovers are so stereotypical that she literally refers to them with archetypal titles: “The Rocker,” “The Woman,” etc. These caricatures don’t feel like they’re overblown to make satirical commentary about the people these archetypes represent; they just feel like weak writing.

The characters are also unlikeable. The husband is evil. The best friend is shallow. Rachel’s both a stereotype and an enigma. She’s simultaneously a “tech genius” and preoccupied with the most shallow aspects of life. She’s simultaneously judging her kids for being on their phones and living on her phone herself, or judging people for breaking Covid rules while breaking Covid rules herself. She’s simultaneously super concerned about her health during the pandemic and drinking and smoking up a storm. She’s simultaneously been super aware of the plight of misogyny for decades and yet didn’t seem to think or talk about it until after her divorce. She’s simultaneously very concerned about the Black Lives Matter movement, but won’t go into details about its significance beyond one off lines relaying how she went to a rally or donated some money to the cause in between hookups, which is what she actually cares about devoting her time to. (It felt as if that detail was just thrown in to make sure that the readers knew Rachel was a good person instead of showing that character trait in a more concrete way.)

She’s also just daft. There’s a point where her elderly neighbor’s husband is in the hospital with Covid, and she thinks, “Wouldn’t it be great if my neighbor had my perfect person app so she could have someone to flirt with while her husband is away? My invention is going to change lives!” She then says she’s being “helpful and wholesome” when she goes to buy that lady a bottle of whiskey to help her cope with her husband’s sickness – because everyone knows using alcohol to drown your sorrows is “wholesome,” right guys? How am I supposed to root for a character who thinks that way?

Toward the end of the book, I became convinced Rachel was on an intentional corruption arc and everyone in her life would push back against her until she was forced to get her act together, but no. She’s flawed like everyone else, but the book never digs super far into the theme of how she’s not a perfect person either and she needs to work on improving herself. Things just luckily work out for her before anything gets too bad, and apparently we were supposed to be on her side the whole time, even when she was at her lowest points, occasionally endangering the health and safety of herself and the people around her.

There was a pervasive shallowness to the book – superficial representations of stereotypical life and settings and on-the-nose, never explored beyond “Isn't this bad, guys?” issues of womanhood and divorce and Covid and dating and racism and AI plagiarism – that defied my expectations of what good literary fiction should be. Combine that with the complex themes of modern technology and loneliness it’s trying to address, and the writing just doesn’t have the strength to say anything new or particularly profound. There are better books on these subjects.

Two stars for being objectively readable and not riddled with plot holes, but one star for personal enjoyment.

[elli ⛧ yourspookymom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, woof.

I really wanted to love this. The premise - a post-divorce reinvention, a team of lovers, and eventually, a custom-built AI boyfriend - sounded like it had all the ingredients for something sexy, strange, and fun. But instead of going gloriously off the rails, the story stays almost agonizingly restrained.

There’s a certain raw honesty to Rachel’s journey, and I can respect the candidness, but the tone is so relentlessly self-deprecating that it ends up more bleak than entertaining. I didn’t find it inspiring or particularly funny, just kind of sad.

Maybe it’s the lockdown setting, which still feels too fresh and heavy to revisit. Or maybe it’s that the AI relationship, which had so much potential for absurdity or real emotional depth, just sort of fizzled. What could have been weird and wonderful felt oddly flat and monotone. And at times, kind of...gross? Not in a sexy or provocative way, just icky.

This book had potential, but it never quite leaned into the chaos it could have delivered.

2/5 stars.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

yeesss this was so good

[Kim van Alkemade · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel has been percolating in my mind since I finished reading it a few days ago. Self discovery, coming of age, exploring your desires, and finding your true self are so often associated with narratives about young adults, as if the discoveries we arrive at by the time we graduate college or finish that Eurail trip with our friends marks the end of a journey. But the reality for me and so many women, as for Rachel, the protagonist of this incredible novel, is that self discovery often comes at midlife, when the milestone of partnership and parenthood and career all raise the stakes for change. Rarely have I seen a character empowered to process complicated emotions, have sexual experiences, and rebalance their approach to parenting in such a visceral, thoughtful, generous way, without shame or punishment. Set in the pandemic during which the merest human touch can mean the difference between life and death, Animal Instinct made me think about the complicated, dangerous, marvelous process of growing into our individuality as connected humans.

[Melissa Levis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m happy to say that I can add this novel to my pile of delicious “female rage” books. Amy Shearn did a nice job illustrating a woman’s experience in “mid-life.” There are so many layers to what is going on, too, which make it very immersive, entertaining and readable.

We pop into Rachel, the FMC’s life in the spring of 2020. She recently separated from her husband. She’s co-parenting with her ex-spouse and the pandemic is gearing up - in NYC, to boot.

Rachel had not felt emotional, physical or sexual fulfillment in her marriage in years and desire wakes up inside of her. As mentioned, she lives at the epicenter of a freaking global pandemic. I’m sure many of us can remember how bizarre things were in those early days with no idea how it spread & how the virus would impact individuals. We were all told to stay at home and NOT to mingle. But Rachel had an “itch to scratch” and she dove into the world of dating apps and started meeting up for sex. It was interesting how Rachel tried to balance exposure risk, health advice and mandates through all of this! While all this is going on, Rachel designs an AI chatbot with the goal of making it her perfect partner. She takes her experiences and “feeds the bot.” Like I said - many layers here!

For the summer of 2020, Rachel and her ex send their three kids to in-person overnight summer camp for 2 months. People did that in 2020, in NY? This is the one part I just had trouble buying in to. But during this summer, Rachel learns a lot about herself, takes power over her being, struggles and grows. She’s also able to hook up with lots of people, live a very adult life and immerse in her career and side projects as an AI-programmer. What ensues is pretty darn interesting to read and following Rachel’s journey is satisfying.

Ok here I go…. I am gonna say it…. If you like All Fours, you will probably enjoy this. If you thought All Fours was “too weird,” but liked the perimenopause angle, you’ll probably enjoy this!

Many thanks to Penguin, Amy Shearn and Netgalley for the advanced e-copy of this book & for the opportunity to provide my honest feedback.

[Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4/5

Being a woman is hard. Add in a (not so great) husband and three (actually really great) kids, life gets difficult.

Rachel is a forty-something year old living in Brooklyn, figuring her life out in the middle of a divorce and a global pandemic. This novel highlights quiet feminine rage, believing in your own self worth, and the simple power of being a woman. Rachel is specifically relatable in the way you can connect to her loneliness and desires. She is witty and matter-of-fact about just how hard life can be. Her journey of self-discovery, being okay with the unknown, and figuring yourself out later in life is heartwarming and touching.

**Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC!**

[Linda · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was not meant for me. I understand that people get divorced, as I once was. I understand there are people who are just here for the sex and enjoyment of it. That's not me. This happened too often for me and they didn't shut the doors. The author was very graphic about each sex scene. For me, uncomfortably so.
For years, I've said, "I'm not a prude, but..." Maybe it's time I start believing, "I am a prude."

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

The science fiction tag is a lie; psychotically dystopian too is a bit of a stretch.

[Chanel Chapters]

Sex in the locked-down City

3.25 ⭐️

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

why did I read this

[Jan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's comment on her book appeared in the Wall Street Journal, where I saw it. She had written a book about a newly divorced woman and her trials and travails with the dating scene, during the pandemic, no less -- and that part is right on -- so she experiments with creating an AI partner for herself. My library turned out to have the book so I decided to check it out. 😊 At first I thought it was erotic. Then I thought it was a little boring. To be fair, I didn't have the chance to read the book straight through, so I'd left and come back to it several times. When I returned once again, the book caught on and I read straight ahead and finished it. One reaction was that there was too much meandering about how the main character is feeling. She has her good female friends who encourage her. She engages in digital dating, in New York. She's really looking for sex because she has come out of a bad marriage in which it was limited and unsatisfactory, and because her husband is dismissive and demeaning. She has tried to stay in the marriage because of the three children, but eventually flew the coop. The sex is graphic. So that was the erotic part. But then it became almost clinical, or anyway not so erotic for me as the reader. I tried to decide whether "R-" or "X-rated." If you can see it in your mind's eye, does that make it X? The sex scenes are interspersed with the motherhood scenes. The book is well written; the author clearly a writer. Maybe the switches between the scenes is a little abrupt. After all, we all switch back and forth, but we do remain the same person. Maybe the transition in the book didn't exactly capture that. Also, I'm glad I didn't come of age in the era of doing all this meeting by phone. Digital compartmentalization would at some point break down, I fear, and the wrong picture would end up with the wrong recipient. I do that from time to time even with simple email! Best for me to let my digital sex life remain in the realm of fantasy! And that section where the protagonist -- I keep wanting to say "author!" -- surmised that her adolescent daughter could teach her a thing or two. I hope not! Saw a recent suggestion to let one's adolescent children have a phone only if they used it entirely in the family areas of the home: good idea! Back to the book. Maybe it was just too polymorphously perverse for me. Too much anything goes. And while I've intimated that the body of the book meandered a bit much, the climax was perhaps too precipitous and the denouement too rushed. I still enjoyed it, though. Glad I finished.

It was only when I was around three quarters through that I noted that texts were written in a different font -- a tiny bit less ornate and in bold -- while some thoughts, at least, were written in italics: maybe a distinction between thoughts and ongoing narration. Very clever, and the joke's on me, not to notice until close to the end.

Some examples of her writing that I enjoyed:

...All around her, life mumbled and yelped. But what she wanted, maybe, wasn't even out there. Maybe what she wanted at that moment was coiled up in the tiny brilliant brain of her phone.

...Rachel was sure she'd never had so much attention from men before. She must be, in her plain summer clothes, walking down the sidewalk, emitting a pheromone haze like a walking crop duster.

And, about a friend whose husband had been unfaithful with the au pair:

So Beth was in mourning, was in shock, was posting pictures of dead birds on Instagram that made everyone worry. And why not--she'd lost both her husband and her childcare, a true modern-day motherhood tragedy.

...Her heart raced in her chest, like it was planning an escape.

Addendum: in the spirit of this novel, here's an article headlined "Bot Meets Girl" in the Sept. 15, 2025 issue of The New Yorker. Pretty funny. I don't think they gift free reads other than, hopefully, letting nonsubscibers open several a month. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

[Craig Amason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amy Shearn has written her version of the novel about a married woman with children who discovers that there is more to life than being a servant to a husband and devoting every conscious moment to the care of their children. The awakening of women in midlife has become a popular theme, with the novel All Fours by Amanda July from 2024 being one of the most successful and critically acclaimed. This theme has been explored by many writers going back to the 19th century, with Anne Tyler doing it justice since the mid-20th century.

As part of her newfound freedom, the protagonist (Rachel) immediately begins re-exploring her sexuality with multiple partners, male and female - thus the title. This novel is quite sexually graphic, but it's not pornographic (or am I protesting too much?) in the sense that Shearn hits hard with several of the most common complaints wives and/or mothers make about feeling trapped in their familial roles. An added bonus is the fact that Shearn is a good writer and knows how to pull readers into the plight of her characters. The book's narrator makes this astute observation about Rachel: "Marriage asked women to go from being exalted angels . . . to household automatons almost immediately - a social contract she'd entered in her twenties, hormonal and untherapized and in no state to make a lifelong commitment. In fact, it should have been illegal to get married so young, she now thought."

The imbalance of parenting, even after divorce, is also on Shearn's radar, where "mothers could only prove their love by endless acts of service . . . and that by legally ensuring he [the divorced father] did his half of the parenting she was shirking some motherly duty. He still didn't even do half!" The real kicker is when Rachel's ex-husband accuses her of acting hysterical and questions whether she is capable of properly caring for their children - the oldest move in the patriarchal playbook.

Rachel has a bit of a revelation about the zero-sum misconception of divorce near the end of the book that I suspect many women need to have: "It had become clear to Rachel that summer that many things could be true at once. She could mourn her marriage while celebrating her liberation . . . . She could be open to a person and not be consumed by them." I am impressed with Amy Shearn and will read more of her fiction.

[Anna Meaney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Animal Instinct follows newly divorced Rachel as she navigates her single life during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the glow of sexual freedom, Rachel creates an AI chat bot as a companion, using her messages from various dating app conquests to make the perfect lover.

For a book about social isolation and the pandemic, this had a lot of characters in it. I felt like this book was let down by having a huge range of characters. I wish that there had been more to Rachel's relationships with the important people in her life, especially her sister, her children, and her friend Lulu. I kept being told that Rachel had these strong bonds, but nothing in the narrative actually proved that to me. Additionally, her relationship with Josh felt totally one dimensional, and I was missing some nuance there.

The thing that sets this book apart from all of the other books about complicated women having a lot of sex is the AI element. I also think this element of the book was not as fleshed out as I'd have hoped. Frankie was not really in the book until pretty far in, and I never found their relationship to be that believable. I also felt like the ending was pretty rushed.

[Guinevere DelaMare · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Audiobook) Exemplar of the Xennial divorce lit genre. 42-year-old Brooklynite leaves her husband during the pandemic and experiences a sexual reawakening while her three children are away at summer camp. It’s a coming-of-(middle)-age tale for the generation of women who were raised to believe they could have it all, but only if they did it all by themselves.

Thank you to @briefbookreviews for the spot-on recommendation, as always! Animal Instinct is less raunchy than Miranda July’s All Fours, pairs well with Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful and Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake.

[This Kooky Wildflower Loves a Little Tea and Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fine book to start my new reading year! In the midst of Spring 2020 (Hmm! What major event took hold then?), Rachel Bloomstein finds herself while everyone else loses themselves in chaos and confusion.

I liked the honesty of this story, and I appreciated reading from an older woman's perspective this time, especially when sexuality and changing societal norms provide the backbone.

Rachel found herself in some wild times, and you know what, good for her.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A darkly funny and oh so RELATABLE book about a divorced Jewish mother of three living in NYC during the early days of the pandemic and her forays into the dating scene. This was both a queer awakening story and a raw, vulnerable look at the challenges of life during lockdown, the loneliness, the extra burdens placed on women as mothers, caregivers, providers and more and the power of female friendship to get you through dark times.

There's also a fun look at the dumpster fire of online dating as coder Rachel designs "Frankie," her own AI bot who is the 'ideal' partner and who for a time she believes herself to be falling in love with in the absence of any potential human love interests.

Great on audio and perfect for fans of books like Annie Bot by Sierra Greer, Blob by Maggie Su or I made it out of clay by Beth Kander. 10/10 recommend this first book by a new to me author. Many thanks to Putnam for a gifted finished copy in exchange for my honest review!!

Fav quotes:
"When all the distractions of life and work and neutral third spaces and friends and acquaintances and help and everything else were stripped away, it became painfully clear how much the women did in the homes and with the children, yes, even while working, and how little the men did, most of all, how many people couldn't actually stand their spouses."

"Real people, we're flawed and we're shitty and we're imperfect and vulnerable and fragile. Our bodies can breathe the wrong air and then fucking die on us...But our bodies can also connect with other bodies. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I'm having sex, that's when I feel close to god. Like, that's when I know there is something magical about being alive on this stupid earth."

[Annahita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Animal Instinct has a sharp, satirical premise—divorced mom Rachel Bloomstein builds an AI chatbot to create the perfect lover—but the execution is uneven. The pandemic setting feels more like a backdrop than a necessary element, and Rachel’s endless romantic misadventures can get repetitive. While the book is darkly funny and offers clever commentary on modern dating and technology, it sometimes lacks emotional depth, making it hard to fully invest in Rachel’s journey. Fans of Big Swiss might enjoy its quirky, provocative style, but it doesn’t always stick the landing.

[Eddy Ireland · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - I was enjoying it until I came across a throwaway line about a birthright trip to Israel. I know it’s fiction but I delved into interviews and info on the author and cannot find anything to show she is pro-humanity so I stopped reading.

🇵🇸

[Kim Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm surprised this doesn't have more glowing reviews. I loved it. I thought it was hilarious. The parts about divorce and single parenting were very relatable and right-on. The AI inclusion is clever and fun. I found myself not wanting to put the book down. I highlighted so many lines and thought the book was full of insightful gems about love, friendship, identity. It was really very profound and heartfelt.

[Wesley Ballesteros · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love women !

[Melanie Ball · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literary smut...a good read for your 40s+

[Maya]

Who knew a pandemic/divorce/AI-chat-bot novel could be so sexy and entertaining?!

[DaniPhantom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A++ for a book about an older woman learning about her sexuality. I need to read more books like this because it paints such a freeing and beautiful version of life, one where people’s lives don’t stop once they’ve already had their kids & gotten married.

[Lindsay Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

So grateful for this book! The horniness and reawakening of a mother in her mid 40s struck very close to home for me. The world sparkles! Who knew??

[Anna Muthalaly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of great observations but fundamentally— who is this book for? Certainly not for people with any kind of long term investment into queer living, and arguably not even hopeful for straight people either.

Animal instinct follows a 40something mom who divorced her husband mere weeks before the pandemic, and is using her new free time to discover how great sex can be and, crucially, collect data for a boyfriend ai she’s building.

Throughout the novel, our main character rachel bristles (correctly!) against how difficult it is to build a life outside of the tyranny of a tragic straight marriage, a man who needs you to be mommy and maid and whore and Virgin. That is the heart of the novel— the difficulty of stepping outside such a paradigm.

However, crucially, Rachel knows she is bisexual this entire book. This is not a coming out novel. She is open to screwing women the whole book. But she weirdly refuses to be open to women the same way she is with men? I was so frustrated at Rachel’s depiction of intimacy with women, strange and passionless, “friend vibes” hookups contrasted with brain melting, soul melting sex with men. She seems to never really actually consider putting stock into her relationships with women

Which, totally, okay fine. Some bisexuals have a strong male preference, that’s totally fine. Some bisexuals need time post straight marriage to really open themselves up to queerness! Also fine

Except the whole reason she begins making her ai bot is because she sees an “androgynous” person on the street one day who she knows is perfect for her, and so she wants to make a robot version of that person. And at the end of the book, that person on the street (who is obviously a queer woman) randomly sits in front of Rachel at a cafe and says she has been thinking of Rachel this whole time.

And then Rachel suddenly allows her feelings to explode, and she has a total HEA with this queer woman, and erases her ai bot, and wowww the answer all along was stepping outside of normativity in a queer relationship.

So again, who is this for?

“Why even talk to wives, actually? It was too annoying, talking to unhappily married women who were too cowardly to change their lives, who had decided their misery meant something. Marriage is hard, but hey, relationships are work!”

I think this quote from the book perfectly explains what to me is a glaring flaw in the novel. A straight person reading this would likely feel trapped in the knowledge that there is no possible heterosexual happy ending for them. And a queer person like myself, one who has already been in significant relationships with queer partners, would feel the exact way rachel feels towards wives— what’s even the point of listening to Rachel complain about heterosexuality when she’s not even exploring the main thing that would fix it, the hard work of being truly open to queerness?

This book works best as a commiseration novel, as Rachel has a lot of excellent takes about the difficulties of straight marriage and divorce and child rearing and the pandemic. But given that the books fundamental end came from the joy and ease of a queer partnership, I’m just too frustrated by her inability to consider such a partnership for the first 300 pages of the novel.

[Courtney Townill · Rating 4 out of 5]

How was she expected to sit there and work on her little tasks when the world was falling apart, when she was existentially exhausted from living through a time of universal trauma? But yes, of course she’d share her screen.

Animal Instinct is the most pandemicish pandemic novel I have read yet. Taking in Rachel’s story, set against a backdrop of summer 2020, while crossing the 5 year anniversary of Covid lockdowns was…an experience.

Rachel has been living the life of unhappy wife and dutiful mother for too long. When she finally breaks free from her draining marriage, Covid lockdowns start, and she’s thrown into the chaos of masking and social distancing and at-home schooling while also being desperate to connect with other people in a time where doing so could mean putting everyone in her life at risk.

It’s hard to say I enjoyed being transported back to early-Covid days in a big city, but Rachel felt relatable. After feeling shut down emotionally for so long, we see her experience a reawakening as she figures out what her new personhood looks like. Still a mom. Still a work from home employee. Still a human being that wants to get railed. There is a lot of commentary about the perils of online dating, but also a lot about shame placed on women seeking pleasure, enduring life instead of enjoying life, and how being in your 40s does not shut you off from continually finding new ways to explore yourself.

The plot in this did feel very loose as Rachel tries to create a Perfect Person AI Chatbot, but once I leaned more into reading this as a slice of life story about a woman working through a very Uncertain Time, I enjoyed it much more.

*I received a free digital review copy from the publisher. Thank you!

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Was fun to read, not quite “big Swiss” but I’ll take it
2. WE DONT WANT TO READ BOOKS ABOUT COVID OR LOCKDOWN
3. The AI boyfriend/girlfriend part was terribly underdeveloped and didn’t quite land, where was the editor on this?
4. Still I found so much of this very relatable and funny and true

"Or no--what she really wanted was to feel something, anything, other than the fear and dread and anxiety of pandemic life, anything besides the stale sadness she'd stagnated in for so long before that. She craved the sense that everything was brand-new and fresh and a bit weird, that something had shifted, was always shifting, would continue to shift, and that you were now seeing a new iteration of the universe, that flavor of existence that was voluptuous with love and wonder, that life mode when the air felt fleshier, the sunlight softer, everything more beautiful because of your...what was it? Happiness, or maybe joy."

[Rhea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woah, this novel really taps in to the zeitgeist. It says so much about what midlife women want right now - all the freedoms. The sex scenes were really well written, if a bit of a fantasy (ALL her partners were great at sex? Unlikely!). This book was pretty activating, and if you are a risk averse person prone to judgment, just skip it. But I found it really fascinating and mostly well written. One star off for how process-driven it was - the author was clearly doing some therapy in this work of art, which I am not opposed to, but it made it repetitive at times. I’m glad I read this, even though I despise AI!!

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow managed to read two pandemic era books back to back, which gave this one a heaviness that complimented it well. I appreciated the difficulty in navigating our sense of self post-divorce, even if my own path looked very different.

The AI chatbot side of things felt like a bit of an underdeveloped story line, but served its purpose. There’s been some interesting debate on AI affairs and romances recently and I think the book touched on them lightly enough without making it too central a theme. Would recommend this Substack post for further reading -
https://open.substack.com/pub/post/p/...

[Denise Kruse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Newly divorced woman, Rachel, experiences lots of fully described sex. She takes risks during Covid because she needs/deserves touch and creates an A.I. character to be the perfect partner. 2 stars because the writing is readable; however, the story is crude and ridiculous.