I received a complimentary copy and this review is entirely my own,
I am glad that Jessica Harris written a book on this topic and hopefully people will find freedom in their journey as they read it.

Well done! The author takes a topic that is overlooked and stigmatized, and addresses it in an honest and grace-filled way. This book will help so many women, marriages, and families.

Thank you to NetGalley and Baker Books for allowing me to read this ARC of Quenched by Jessia Harris. Quenched releases today, January 31, 2023. My thoughts are my own.

Happy book birthday to Quenched!

I’ll admit, I’ve never quite read a book like Quenched before, due in large part to a lack of resources available on the subject. Now, there are some books out there, for instance, by Shannon Ethridge (Every Woman’s Marriage and The Sexually Confident Wife), but where they are a practical how-to guide and lack–to some measure–the personal and raw testimony of the author, Quenched presents the author’s story in bright, living color. Additional writers Harris mentions include Mo Isom Aiken and Phylicia Masonheimer, but until reading Quenched, I had never heard of either of them.

Let’s Talk about the Book
Writing from personal experience and drawing from the story of The Woman at the Well found in John 4, Harris entreats women stuck in pornography to find freedom in Jesus, who should be our source of living water, where we can be “quenched” of our thirst for identity, love, forgiveness and healing. She makes direct parallels with the woman at the well’s lifestyle and then shows how Jesus met her where she was, beckoning her to come to him as she was.

Why aren’t there more resources like Quenched out there? It seems like it has only been in recent years that the Christian community has begun to address the fact that not only men struggle with pornography. And, when I say pornography, I’m also including mainstream romance novels, erotica and “mommy porn”.

I know, I know…some of you reading this review will not agree with me on the above, but if that’s the case, I would ask you to consider why you read romance novels or erotica, and if you are a Christian, how that is helping your relationship with Christ.

Like I said, until recently, pornography was only seen as a man’s problem, which Harris found out firsthand when the Dean of Students at the college she attended, assumed she was providing her password to guys at the college. It would never have occurred to her that Harris was the one with the problem!

And there does seem to be some disconnect here. While not a direct focus in the book, purity culture is brought up briefly, and while I’m not one to fully criticize this movement, having been raised during it myself, I do wonder if there was an automatic assumption that if purity rings were distributed to the girls, churches had fulfilled their obligation to obliquely bring this subject to light and thereby extinguishing the need to address it further. Then again, there was a lot of knowledge and thought that women would be affected by this as well.

Some of the most profound takeaways I discovered:
You can’t live in this type of sin and minister effectively; there’s a duplicitousness and hypocrisy that will likely eat away at you
Pornography is idolatry
Pornography can become a form of worship
Sexual sin and shame from it are not a respecter of persons; women from good homes and not so good homes can get easily entangled in the sinister web of pornography
A lack of communication on the topic of sex within the church leads to an existential crisis and deconstructing of one’s faith
Women who view pornography or engage in fantasy or other forms of sexual sin face can take on an incorrect view of intimacy, which can follow them into marriage
Until I read Quenched, I had never heard the term “chronic hateful self-objectification”, which creates “unrealistic expectations and misunderstandings about sex, and I would go even further and say that this shame can create an incorrect view of marital intimacy

What This Book Is Not
This is not a how-to manual, and Harris makes it very clear from the get go: her mission is not to give steps to stop pornography usage. Rather, she works to introduce, re-introduce or clarify salvation and sanctification and how it’s only through relationship first with Jesus and with community that this can be dealt with (and dealt with well).

Themes
One of the biggest themes you will discover in this book is that of shame. Shame feels immobilizing and defeating and can keep a chokehold on us ever drawing us deeper. Shame also likes to keep us silent. And in the silence, there is loneliness and isolation. Shame keeps a hold on us and in our isolation and loneliness, we see no way out; it’s a vicious circle.

I think another theme is how to find your voice and to share your story. We need more people to share their stories, to speak out on their experiences and to take away the silence and isolation that so many feel.

Would I Recommend This Book?
Yes, I would recommend this book. Harris is an exceptional writer who draws from the Bible to share her story. It’s not as emotionally driven as, say, Lysa TerKeurst and therefore does not play on your emotions. And I think this is critical to this type of book and provides it a practicalness that makes the application and takeaways stand out greater.

I see this as being a great resource for college age and up. I think that someone who is younger, who is fighting this battle will be looking specifically for how to get out of it and the information might go over their heads. I see this as being a great resource for women’s Bible Studies and women’s ministry.

So with that thought in mind, might I inquire about a journal or a Bible Study to go along with this book? I hope Harris has already started to think about these elements.

One final thought: Harris brings in grace throughout her book, how there is a certain judgmental attitude from others in the church when this topic comes up. I would like to say that we are never going to be able to deal head on with this issue until we acknowledge that there is a problem. I love how Harris’s college community approached this topic just a year after she was told it was a man’s problem: they welcomed her with open arms and walked alongside her, determined to help her out of the pit and shame she found herself in. May we all extend the same grace and love.