AS social media connects us to every corner of the world, we find ourselves unable to connect during face to face interactions. As it helps some, it harms others and makes it all too easy to find disconnect within your community.

A fascinating trip through the current age of technology and sexuality. Every young person in tumult should have this on their bedside table!

This was so informative, but probably not the most relevant to the audience I teach. I think it probably helped me be a more empathetic person to some people’s experiences, but I won’t be adopting it as, again, I just don’t think it’s quite for teens.

This is the kind of book that will make you think long after you finish it. It's not just the somewhat taboo and undiscussed topics or the slightly voyeuristic feeling of reading about them, it's the fact that it left me thinking, "Who gets to decide what normal is?"
Now, this isn't the primary thing that the author was trying to convey, as the thread that ties everything together is how anyone can find their tribe and feel part of a community thanks to the hyperconnected world we live in today. That's definitely interesting and Tsoulis-Reay did a great job of writing about how things have changed, becoming a lot easier for people who are outside what the majority consider to be normal, however, the things that continually made me stop to think were more along the lines of what normal is and how it's defined. With a couple of exceptions that I found icky despite trying to be as open-minded as possible, most of the people interviewed are just going about their lives in a way that doesn't fit in with the status quo.
I can see it really not being the kind of book a lot of people would enjoy because it's really well-written and researched, but it's also incredibly uncomfortable even if you like to think of yourself as having an open mind. Tsoulis-Reay dug deep into each topic and found people willing to bare their souls in order to give as comprehensive a look at their lifestyles as possible. The fact that the author manages to do so as detachedly as the most veteran of journalists while still being sympathetic and empathetic is beyond impressive.

Very happy thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the thought-provoking read!

I have so many mixed emotions about this book and I am struggling to come up with a coherent review. Alexa Tsoulis-Reay's Finding Normal is a well-researched and uncomfortable look into the private lives of people whose sexual inclinations run the gamut from unconventional to disturbing. The premise of the book is an investigation of the ways as a society we define what is normal and how the hyper-connectedness of the internet is rapidly changing that for better or worse. I was drawn to this book because I found this to be a fascinating subject. I am always interested in the ways other people have found new ways to name feelings and ways of being. However, I must admit the content of the book turned out to be deeply troubling and maybe that's the point. Regardless I had some real issues with the book and the sensationalized manner the author approached issues like Polyamory and Asexuality. Again I understand that the author intended to investigate the ways the hyperconnected era has shaped new ways of self-definition but by only focusing on sexual or romantic inclinations rather than the full breadth of her writing from her What Its Like column, she poses these issues as if they are within the same spectrum as incest and sex with animals. Regardless of my feelings on the subjects addressed, the book is a thoroughly researched and thought provoking look into human nature . It is a window into worlds rarely discussed and offers more questions than answers about the power of empathy and the conflicting feelings it can bring to the surface.

*3.5*

Based on a series of interviews conducted for New York magazine’s human science column, Alexa Tsoulis-Reay explores the ways that people use the Internet to find community, forge connections, and create an identity for those who challenge a variety of accepted sexual and societal norms. Finding Normal: Sex, Love, and Taboo in Our Hyperconnected World shows the enduring power of the search for belonging and finding normal that are the definitive human struggles.

The first three chapters are good for anyone to read. It looks at polyamory, age-gape relationships, and asexuality. It helps those interested find help on social media and as well as internet groups mentioned in the book. Looking at these consensual relationships will help readers find their own truth and, maybe, even allow members to open up to each other. These chapters are well written in a fair voice. Stats are buffered by people's stories which gives the numbers human life.

The second half focuses on two taboos where power disparities are common. While I know the author was trying to see from others' points of view and made friends during her research, she lacks objectiveness in these later chapters. These chapters discuss the way the internet has made people with these taboos contact others like them, helping them through their anxiety and self-disgust. But in the end, the author becomes almost obsessed with the two people that are the most featured within these chapters.

The first taboo is Genetic Sexual Attraction Syndrome (GSA) and how consensual incest happens and how people can break away. The author distances herself which makes emotional sense the writer includes her emotional drama about any possibility of “encouraging” said behavior. I didn't need her psychological drama and it takes away from the people in these situations. By the time you get to the zoophilia chapter, you know she has “drank the kool-aid” so to speak. While there is intellectual debate on consent and logical arguments, there isn't the same discussion of power dynamics between humans and animals (especially a pet that depends on you for lively hood) as you see in the GSA chapter.

These two chapters aren't for just any book group. You have to have an open mind and understand the feeling of the person in the chapters. This does not mean condoning, but to understand why these things happen and how and when to help those that need it.

I found this book interesting especially the two later chapters. I enjoyed hearing from these people, what they felt and what happened to them in their life. I have a special interest in psychology and continuing my education by reading these anecdotes and statics included in this book.

Who this good for
Those that want to have an intellectual discussion about a variety of sexual preferences and the mindset of taboos

Who it's not for
Anyone who is sensitive to abuse, has the inability to discuss calmly, and who cannot separate the issues between not “normal” and unethical

This book explores several different "taboo" relationship types. I thought that this would be an interesting read and it was, but it made me super uncomfortable. I wasn't expecting to read about incest or bestiality. The author did provide adequate trigger warnings, but I was still very uncomfortable. The first part of the book with polyamorous relationships and May-December romances was really interesting and I did appreciate learning more from people in these relationships. I think the second part of the book just really overshadowed any good.

*eARC provided in exchange for an honest review*

I think this book had a lot of potential to do a lot of good but fell short in some of the sections. I've seen a ton of conflicting reviews for this and I'm finding myself in the middle. While I think it's important to discuss different walks of life and normalize them, there is a line that we cannot cross for the safety of humankind.

I think this book does a good job at sharing stories from other people and their experiences. I loved the discussions about taboo lifestyles. It's definitely a great resource for people learning to accept others without judgement. I enjoyed my read of it. It was a little slower, like most nonfiction is for me, but still a nice one. I think I've learned that fictional stories are more for me, but I really like what this was trying to accomplish.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

I like the concept of the book, but not the delivery of it. I also think some of the taboos were just a little too taboo for me. This book is not for the faint of heart

This book is grounded in a series of columns the author wrote for New York Magazine exploring human behavior, particularly people in unconventional, uncommon, or taboo sexual or romantic relationships. Tsoulis-Reay expands on those columns, sometimes revisiting the people featured or detailing more about her experiences writing them. It's meant to showcase the ways in which people connect and find community, and while she certainly proves people can find an in-group for almost anything, I'm not sure that she really succeeds at endearing some of these characters to us anymore.

There are five (quite long) chapters -- consensual non-monogamy, age-gap relationships, asexuality/aromanticism, genetic sexual attraction, and bestiality. Clearly some of these relationships are more taboo than others, and Tsoulis-Reay does her best to present the content without a lot of judgment. But it still feels like we're less hearing their stories and more hearing her experience of the people she interviewed. She's a clear intermediary between the reader and the subjects, and I just don't think it really works.

A huge strong point for the book is the work Tsoulis-Reay did in investigating the origins of the online communities where these groups of people started to connect with each other. As someone who spent a lot of time on Tumblr in the 2000s and early 2010s, I remember watching people gain the vocabulary they needed to identify themselves there, and I understand the power of an online group of friends who make you feel like whatever you're feeling is normal. The parts where she's talking about the early Internet (and even activists who came before it) were the most interesting to me.

This book wasn't quite what I wanted it to be, and it's not one I'd recommend to everyone. But for those interested in the history of community-building online, this could be a really good fit.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review an e-ARC of Finding Normal. This collection of essays packed a lot of information, as the author Alexa Tsohlis-Reay kept in contact with some of the interview subjects for years. It was interesting to see how different people's perception of "normal" can be.

The first half of the book focuses on polyamory, age gap relationships, and asexuality. These are three groups that I would not have thought of as not being considered "normal" because of my own experiences with people who fit into these categories. The portion on asexuality was the most informative to me and I enjoyed learning.

The second half of the book was difficult because I found the subject matter ("consensual" incest and zoophilia) extremely disturbing. The topic of incest mostly covered adoptees reuinited with birth parents who then entereed into "romantic" and sexual relationships with them. As a birth parent myself this was appalling to me and I could not empathise in any way. It struck me as horrific abuse on the parts of the birth parents. Likewise, the zoopholia chapter horrified me. The author focused a lot on whether or not consent can happen with animals, which was interesting because it focused on nonverbal cues but did nothing to sway my belief that romantic/sexual relationships with animals is completely wrong. It felt that the author was trying to make the point that people should be more open minded about that, but I just couldn't. I'm perfectly fine with my inability to accept incest or zoophilia.

Overall, I would recommend the book for the chapters on polyamory, age gap relationships, and asexuality. The chapters on incest and zoophilia could be really triggering but if you can get past that, it was still interesting to read about the mindsets of the people involved.

This title and description was too good to resist. Wild.

I found myself speed reading the "usual" sexualities that were covered in the first part like polyamorous, lgbt, asexual, and age gaps to head into the more scandalous ones in part two. I found the reporting to be very neutral, and objective all throughout. The writer adds her two cents here and there, and lots of disclaimers about she is not advocating for anyone or giving them a platform. The chapters on each are very lengthly and I almost feel like Part 1 should have been condensed, for interest sake more than anything.

Part 2 covers consensual incest and zoophiles. Scandalous. Again, very objective reporting on the people that volunteered to talk. I enjoyed the foray into psychology on the incest one, and was feeling some empathy for the zoophile by the end of that one, surprisingly. I enjoyed reading about the people and deciding for myself where I stand morally on their confessions.

I think Part 2 should have been the meat of the book and expanded, as there are opportunities to cover more. For the age gap in Part 1, I was almost expecting a pedophile to be interviewed because just like incest and sex with animals, is illegal. By the end of this, I was also wondering about the people that have kinks and are into feet, bdsm, furries and all that. While these might just be kinks instead of sexual orientations, generally I would have been interested in more coverage of the abnormal.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a well-researched series of articles that the author originally posted in New York Magazine. These cover groups of people who are on societies fringes with the lifestyles they choose to live on. Some being on the mild side and some way on the dark side but all that would people who would be shunned in so-called normal society. This also covers how the internet has brought these likeminded people together. The mild side covers people who are in non-monogamy relationships, asexuals, relationships with extreme age differences. These cover a majority of the book but the author does cover some extreme taboo subjects and this is separated in the book by a warning page before you move on to these chapters and this maybe the stopping point for some who read this book. The author does not push any of these types of relationships or acts but there will be some who will claim she is an enabler or trying to normalize this type of behavior or that she is responsible for assisting in this country's moral decline. One story i really found disturbing was how they attempted to handle unwed teenage mothers in their attempt to reassimilate these girls back into society with their reputation intact.

I love the concept of this book. I think it’s well-written, we’ll-researched, and well-structure. I’m pretty open-minded sexually and, for the most part, I agree that people can do whatever floats their boat privately- as long as it doesn’t harm children or anyone(thing) that cannot give consent.
And that’s where this book loses stars for me. The incest and beastiality genuinely upset me and I could not read those chapters. I get it, those things are real and occur, but I appreciate the trigger warnings so I could avoid that section entirely.
That being said, most people could benefit from reading the first part of this book. There are some close-minded folks out there who could really use this as a wake-up call to make an effort to understand without the need to participate. I’d recommend it to anyone curious about basically anything “alternative” in sexuality. Again, aside from children and animals, the idea of “right vs wrong” in sex shouldn’t even be a thing, but anyone open to learn could benefit from this one.

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of Finding Normal: Sex, Love, and Taboo in Our Hyperconnected World by Alexa Tsoulis-Reay. This non-fiction book analyzes the concept of “Normal,” and how the Internet has helped people with stigmatized desires find community and get answers to their questions without the judgment that others in society often inherently have.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It was a thoughtful analysis of the concept of normal and bias and what it means to have a supportive community. This analysis included positive and negative results of finding support for non-“normative” concepts. Having a concept of “normal” can sometimes result in people being closed-minded about things they simply do not understand, things that are not hurting other people, such as the first concept that Reay goes into great detail about: people who have open relationships and/or swingers. Reay looks at how people who needed such relationships prior to the internet struggled to find other people who understood them, and how the internet has helped all of them to find a community and engage in the relationship they need. I try to be an open-minded person, but of course, have my own biases, and not having had those particular desires myself, it was very interesting to read about their perspectives and felt a bit fairy-tale esque to read about how they were able to find acceptance through the internet.

However, sometimes, people engage in activity that is not considered “normal” for ethical reasons. Another taboo behavior that is discussed in the book is incest, which, if you are reading my blog, I will assume you agree from a biological and psychological perspective is just not okay. Reay writes about the concept of incestuous desires from a place of curiosity, but ultimately, the fact that there are parents who will act on these desires turns the community that such like-minded individuals have formed a bit darker. How, when you are looking at a parent-child relationship, can there not be a power dynamic at play? Children often want to please their parents, regardless of age, and this desire can be taken advantage of, even if the child sincerely believes he or she is a consenting adult.

There are also some grey areas, such as large age-gap relationships. There is the indisputable statutory rape age difference, for example, which is legally not allowed, since children cannot consent to sexual relationships with adults. But what about a 10-year age difference between a person in his/her/their sixties and his/her/their fifties? What about a 20-year age difference between a person in his/her/their sixties and his/her/their forties?

This blog post is providing just a taste of the thoughtful writing that Reay provides in this book, which includes multiple examples/interviews for each type of non-“normal” activity. If you are interested in the concept, and can read the information with an open mind, I strongly recommend picking up a copy.

My only gripe with this book is that the more taboo concepts are not as fully developed, and it feels like there is more room for analysis. Still, I am not certain that I could have written, or even read, more on those subjects. It is hard to spend time with concepts that are taboo and should remain that way. So this gripe is tiny, and purely from an analytical/editorial viewpoint in which I am trying to remain unbiased. Which basically means I was reading this book correctly, I think, since a lot of the point is to recognize that you have biases, and they may not all be fair, so once you recognize a bias, re-evaluate and figure out if you need to change your stance. I have this crazy theory that, like, if people were more intellectual and empathetic, and thought through how their behavior impacted other people, and tried to be more thoughtful and cool about what they went crazy about, the world might be a better place. As an American citizen, however, it is difficult for me ever seeing that happening, either, so… maybe just read the book and pretend?

A really unusual fascinating look at people with different forms of sexuality & sexual attraction.A peek into their intimate lives.Well written really eye opening.#netgalley #stmartins.

Definitely a different read for me but honestly it was a good book. The writing is excellent and even though I didn't read it particularly quickly, still worth the read.

Yeah, I couldn’t finish this one, I made it 75% through but the chapter on bestiality was as bad as the trigger warnings professed. Of what I did read, the author does not have any interesting exploration of her subject matter and the framing was nothing special, it is pretty dry and the questions for thought at the end of each chapter just felt tacked on and limp. The chapter on age gap relationships turned out to be familiar to me already as I’d seen the primary couple featured on that snapchat segment “Love Don’t Judge,” and this book is kind of that writ large — no real discussion, just a presentation of people. And the two poles are 1) things you’re probably familiar with, asexuality and polyamory and 2) incest and bestiality.

As a real criticism for publishers,I know that the chapter titles were probably left just as the interviewee’s names in order to emphasize them as people over their sexual proclivities, but I wish that the titles had something to do with the content of the chapter so as a reader I could gauge exactly what I’m about to read or what chapters I want to skip without having to be deep into them.

Tsoulis-Reay did an amazing job of being both a narrator and an educator in this book. She was sympathetic with the people she interviewed and very careful with their stories and how they came across. She was able to provide insight into what the public might think of these taboos, but also educate on where the people living these lives are coming from and how, other than their taboos, they are relatively normal people.

The first part of this book was exactly what I was expecting this book to be about. The only thing that sat a bit weird with me is the chapter on asexuality and aromantic folk. The two chapters before this (non-monogamy and age-gap relationships) are things that most people would do a double take at and majority of people would say is weird or taboo. I personally don't see someone who identifies as asexual and/or aromantic to be taboo, nor do I really believe that many people really ever saw this as taboo. It fits well under the normalizing part and function of this book, as it does detail how many people did not know about asexuality until the invention of the internet and communities were provided for these people to express themselves and realize they are not alone. But its stands out because it isn't in fact on the same level as the other topics. In a way I feel like it can almost be demeaning to ace folk.

The second part of this book really should have been a book of it's own I believe. It is a lot to take in and can be extremely triggering and upsetting to some folk. There was an extra layer to these stories that I think could have benefitted from being explored a bit deeper and explained more thoroughly. I assume most of the reactions to this part of the book are going to be that this is all gross, not normal, f-ed up, etc. And I would lying if I said I didn't have a gut reaction upon reading the first few pages of these chapters. However, this part of the book is also where the authour shines. She is about to relay information accurately, in a safe way, and make readers see that these people are in fact fairly normal and people we may encounter in our daily lives and just have no clue.

Ultimately, this really wasn't the book for me but definitely a book that will stick out in my mind.

Thank you to NetGalley and St.Martins Press for giving me this eARC in exchange for an honest review. The views and opinions are 100% my own.