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This book won't be for everyone and at first I wasn't sure it was for me. I am challenging myself to read more women's fiction this year and I was drawn to this premise because I am going through a similar situation that I am struggling with in my personal life and I saw a lot of my issues in those of the unnamed narrator's.

What I didn't like: I'm an English/Creative Writing major so I thought I would be charmed by the constant quotations and philosophizing as the narrator navigates a newly open marriage. But there were so many quotations, each short chapter felt just littered with them; I found my eyes glazing over with so many. This author is clearly a well-read polymath and was showing that off to a pretentious degree.

It is also clearly autofiction, which is not my favorite style, and at first the story felt choppy, told in short personal essays instead of a cohesive, traditional narrative arc; a lot more telling referenced with quotations instead of showing and immersing us in the day to day of her life. It felt like reading her personal diary.

The narrator and many of the characters in this book are unlikable, but this is a modern love story and a story about feminism and a middle-aged woman coming of age in a new chapter in her life in a way that I found very relatable.

The story opens with the narrator talking about her history with crushes. Early on she learned she loved kissing men. Then she learned that kissing multiple men too quickly would get her labeled a slut, which made her uncomfortable. So she learned to navigate her love of kissing by having one monogamous relationship and a stable of crushes. She'd never act on these feelings but became an expert in the fun cat and mouse game of flirtation, which satisfied her need for awhile.

Then she marries Paul and has a kid with him. An artist whom she resentfully supports with her earnings as a ghostwriter, she is attracted to him not because he feels emasculated by her crushes but because he finds her flirting thrilling and erotic. The sex between them is good and the narrator values a stable family above all else, so she foregoes her needs, such as kissing.

Paul proposes an open marriage, in which the narrator can kiss anyone she likes, and in return Paul can experiment with online dating. But the boundaries and expectations keep shifting, leading to miscommunication and jealousy.

Wondering who she can kiss next, the narrator reconnects with an old college crush, who is now a very sexy but nerdy college professor, and the two engage in a long-distance correspondence over a shared love of books and letters. Soon the narrator finds herself in a dilemma: She has fallen in love with another man, and it is a deep, lifetime, spirtual sort of soulmate connection. And suddenly everything she had with Paul that was good before becomes suffocating and stale and she has to choose the kind of life she wants for herself, while struggling with her complicated relationship with her dying writer father. It soon becomes apparent that she's sought emotional validation from everyone in her life except herself.

Advocates of polyamory and people who hate cheating will each dislike this novel, because what this couple practices is not polyamory at all or even ethical nonmonogamy. They aren't honest with each other about their expectations and boundaries, and aren't fair to themselves or their lovers. A couple like this is the worst fear of a poly purist who is dating for genuine connection. My poly friends aren't like this couple. And the nonstop quotations just felt like the narrator trying to justify an extramarital affair and became tedious. I found myself frequently rolling my eyes at how incredibly sappy they got - sometimes I wanted to shake them to take responsibility for their affair.

I also wanted to shake Paul sometimes - how could he know his wife so little that he thought she could keep it at just kissing? I often wondered what he was getting out of the marriage other than financial dependence.

But it happens, married people fall in love with other people, and I liked their love story. Telling you who she picks would be a complete spoiler.

However, the way the overall narrative arc coalesced was beautiful and touching to me, and I found this novel had a lot of meaningful things to say about love, relationships, what women want and if they really can have it all, and nontraditional families.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.