This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who's read Melissa Febos previous works, but she has knocked it out of the park once again with The Dry Season. This book was incredibly reflective, well-researched, humorous, and brings a needed perspective on celibacy, dating, and spirituality.

The book follows Febos on her initial three-month (soon extended to a year-long) vow of celibacy after a particularly destructive relationship. Throughout the novel, Febos guides us through her past "inventory" of failed relationships while including research and literary analysis of women throughout history, from religious figures to her literary icons. The Dry Season includes many poignant reflections on relationships both good and bad, and finding your "divine purpose" in life.

The amount of self-reflection Febos is able to infuse throughout the novel is truly inspiring, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who, like me, is trying to decenter romantic relationships in their lives. This is the type of novel that I'm certain I'll find myself coming back to in moments of uncertainty or when I need to gain perspective.

The author and I have opposite life experiences. I’ve never been in a relationship, never been in love, rarely have crushes, and momentarily I’m not dating because I’m focusing on my career. I am also demisexual and demiromantic. I’ve never struggled with the topics the author described, so the book was a little hard for me to get through because its relatability was missing. However, just because the book was not written for me, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an audience. I’m sure plenty of people will enjoy this story and find it insightful.

Melissa Febos is an expert essayist. I was thoroughly impressed with her collection Girlhood and was so excited to read her upcoming release The Dry Season. It does not disappoint.

Febos chronicles facing her sex addiction by taking a year off of sex. She looks inward and investigates her relationship with romance, sex and power. She writes about dating and queer love. She connects her story to the work and experiences of women in feminist and lesbian history. I realized reading this that there isn’t a lot of writing on celibacy, but it is very interesting to read and think about.

The essays are stellar. Read this! Read everything Febos has written! She really is one of the best essayists writing today.

The Dry Season is Febos as sharp as ever before. She writes with honesty, curiosity, and intention while exploring celibacy, intimacy, internal narratives, relationships, fulfillment, and so much more. Beyond grateful that she wrote this and beyond grateful for Knopf for the early copy. I will be placing this in the hands of everyone I know when it comes out.

Melissa Febos is a master of her craft, and I was so pleased to find in The Dry Season the same inviting prose, reflective themes, and sudden wit that made me fall in love with her previous book, Body Work. This is required reading for anyone thinking about their relationship to relationships and the ways in which they want to connect with others in the world. Indeed, anyone who is looking to make a conscious change in their life might find wisdom in The Dry Season. My copy is full of underlined and annotated passages and I will be recommending this to anyone who will listen. I finished it feeling inspired, sated, and full of love for the world.

Febos brings her sharp observations and stunning vulnerability to this deeply researched memoir about celibacy.

It was more literature review than personal narrative for my taste, but still a fascinating exploration of sex, sexuality and celibacy.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Engaging and accessible. A recommended purchase for collections where memoirs and sexual health titles are popular.

Febos writes with an intimacy so unflinching it feels almost invasive. Her writing is brave and bold, navigating the maelstrom of her inventory while including feelings on her body, history and celibacy. She also includes thoughts on several of her artistic influences, like Agnes Martin and Virginia Woolf, each one refracting an essential truth. Her meditation on Octavia Butler was particularly inspiring.

There were moments when I could not keep up with the amount of stories in the book, almost like I was being pulled away from a thought or lover too quickly. But by the middle, something shifted. The book began to reveal itself as a mirror, reflecting universally on loneliness and love. I related heavily to her encounter with her spiritual mentor, recognizing a truth that I’ve never wanted to admit to myself.

I am a fast reader, but this is not a book to be hurried. Every page deserves your full attention and I admittedly re-read numerous passages, several times over.

Like Body Work, I hope to return to Dry Season in the future.

*Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC

Febos recounts her experience as a serial dater and the decision to remain celibate for a year (9 months?). She writes about flirting, dating, lovers, good relationships, bad relationships, friendship, sex work, queer love, mystics, celibate/spiritual women, and other topics relating to feminism, religion, and mental health.

This was a timely read for me. Last year, in December 2024, I decided to take a year-long vow of celibacy after over a decade of serial dating that left me feeling dizzy, bored, confused, alarmed, angry, annoyed, and frustrated. Reading this book has been a real treat and a revelation. Also, both Febos and I have a significant relationship to the word 'maelstrom', which I thought was oddly coincidental and I just had mention it lol.

This is my first Febos and I'm so glad to have finally read her. She introduced me to many writers that I cannot wait to read, and she taught me so much about old favorites, particularly Woolf.

Thank you so much for the ARC!

There is no writer out there who does self reflection like Melissa Febos. Her writing style is absolutely incredible as is her attention to detail. I love how she brings in other pieces of literature and spirituality in her writing to support her own experiences. This work is by far one of her best and makes you really self reflect while experiencing her story.

Wow, I loved this book. As someone with addiction issues, avoidant attachment, and generally confused about life I really connected with this book. I think anyone who is going through change to be a better person in relationships and be a better person to yourself, this one is for you.

Finishing this book left me with a mix of emotions. I ended up reading it in just three days—an outcome of my own impatience, but it was impossible to stop once I started. I was captivated by how Melissa thoughtfully examines her inner world and life journey.

It’s bittersweet that the experience of reading this gorgeous, thoughtful book is over. My own fault for tearing through it in just three days, but I couldn’t help myself — I love the way Melissa explores the contours of her own psyche and life experience.

And I’m not surprised. I’ve loved each of Melissa’s books before, and was so enormously excited to receive an ARC for this one; one I’m excited to read all over again when it’s released in June.

In <i>The Dry Season</i>, as in her previous books, Melissa is so honest, often funny, so curious and considered in her approach to the wisdom that’s come from women before and the wisdom she has gleaned from her own life.

Like Melissa at the start of this book, I’ve been consistently romantically partnered since high school, and often wondered — even as I’m now in a partnership I love — if I would benefit from time alone.

“I was reassured by the fact that I never felt afraid to be alone,” Melissa writes. “I did not consider how one might not ever feel the thing she had successfully outrun.”

Oof.

That was one of many lines I loved that I copied down in my notebook — lines that turned into paragraphs that turned into page after page of Melissa’s words I wanted to remember.

<i>The Dry Season</i> is a book about Melissa’s year of celibacy, yes, but it’s also about the internal narratives we carry into relationships and the relationships we forge (or don’t) with ourselves and our own connection to spirituality; about how having a deeper connection to these inner relationships can allow us to be in relationship with another without needing to be validated or "made whole" by their existence. I can’t think of a single person who wouldn’t benefit from, at the very least, witnessing Melissa’s exploration into the depths of those narratives and relationships from her past.

Much like when I read Leslie Jamison’s <i>Splinters</i> last year (or <i>The Recovering</i> back in 2018), when I read this book, I was struck not just by how much I related to Melissa’s personal experience, but also by how much I desired to interrogate and excavate my own experience like her as a writer.

What a gift to get to read from her again.

I requested this because of my interest in female mystics and Hildegard in particular and that was most certainly the most interesting and best part of this memoir. I've never read anything by this author before and while there are quotes and sections that resonated, overall I found it a bit verbose.

Febos combines personal narrative writing with well-researched historical and literary analysis. The book is a cold splash of water to the face any other serial monogamist that come across it. It should go without saying if you enjoyed any of Febos other work, especially Girlhood, then you will love this book as well.

Melissa Febos gives us quite a bit to chew on in her memoir about a year of celibacy--Dry Season. The courage and honesty it took to write this book is quite admirable. Her life, her relationships and her failures are all out in the open. Febos decides to abstain from sex basically because she is an addict and she sees that this is one more of her addictions. But it is more complex. She says: "It was easy to frame my relationship to romance within the paradigm of addiction, but I knew it was more complicated...[there was] an underlying relationship to power, escape, and that bottomless need my old therapist had been so sure I possessed." Then she inventories her relationship as well as her forays into other women's lives who have chosen celibacy or who have struggled with their sexuality. She becomes more centered on herself and begins to feel more wholeness within herself and not dependent on someone else's attentions. And the ancestors helped her.
"My attempt to replace dependence with independence and interdependence, to share my questions and answers with the women who came before and after me, was the radical basis of all feminisms. It was the basis of all freedoms. It was my inheritance."
The book is not only an inventory, however. Her mix of travels to ancestors' homes and a rich feminist and lesbian history makes the book an interesting read. She discusses many famous figures--Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Robert Gluck, Margery Kempe, Hildegard of Bingen, and a group of 13th century lay religious nuns called Beguines who promised not to marry and advocated celibacy. She also includes experiences of friends and acquaintances. It is a fascinating journey.
Melissa Febos is a writer and writing professor who was a heroin addict and a dominatrix. She is the author of four memoir/essay books and has won many awards. I read her recent book Body Work which was thought-provoking and very much aimed at writers. She identifies as queer and is now in a relationship with the poet Donika Kelly.

An odd book that was sometimes puzzling and sometimes thought provoking

(I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)