I really wanted to like this story and had high hopes for exploring the themes of the constraints of traditional church beliefs as they come up in conflict with the main character's desire to explore her sexuality, but ultimately I found myself unwilling to continue reading past the 37% mark.

In this story, Lily is a pastor's kid whose entire life has been marked by deep indoctrination and involvement in church life. This includes her peer group, her work, her colleagues, her family, and even the college she attended. But she is focused on discovering sexual pleasure and walks into a Boston bar with one intent: to lose her virginity. When she comes across a previous college classmate who'd harbored a crush on her, she's found her target and they engage in a sexual romp that lasts the weekend (and takes up approx 25% of the pages in the story).

However, I found the writing style to be too heavy on the narrative and was not able to connect with the characters as I had hoped.

There are so many ingredients of this story I found appealing, particularly the character's hyper-religious roots and the potential for heavy internal (and external) conflict to erupt on the page, but within the portion I read, I felt that the conflict was lacking and the scenes frequently were quite short, often quickly changing the point-of-view narrator. These shifts (in one instance, a scene was two paragraphs long before it swapped back to the other character), made the reading experience feel distracting and choppy, and detracted from my ability to immerse into the story.

While there was a heavy dose of steamy scenes in this first portion of the book, I wish I understood more of Lily's motivation and her emotional journey as she crossed these boundaries and unlocked this aspect of herself. For readers looking for quick, episodic-style reads with a primary focus on the erotic interactions between characters, this book could be right up your alley.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC for review.

This one had me at the title. I expected it to get smuttier earlier, but this book took it's time, and then, oh my! I enjoyed the sensuality because I needed a spicy read, what can I say, it's been a long pandemic! Thanks for the ARC.

I could not get into this one.
It’s just sex. And not good sex.
I skipped till the end just so I could say I finished it.
Barely, but I did finish it.
I had higher hopes for this one. Maybe I would have liked it more if I was younger - I don’t know!

Got halfway but I can't carry on. It's the insta love that finished me. But the constant use of rhe word channel, the shallow 2D characters including Lisa and the flimsy dialogue just weren't working for me.

I'm sure it is fine if you just want an erotic read and you don't really mind about development or plot but I need decent characters and some form of a plot to read on.

Great, fun, and spicy book about self discovery and finding a partner that’s passionate and willing to share their experiences with. I stayed up late to see how the story would end. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.