The Book of Love - book discontinued by DK Publishing - review by Fuck it.

Audience:
Hands down, my biggest gripe about this book is how narrow the target audience is after the cover straight up says it's for "every couple". This book is for successful straight women who are (and are dating) walking stereotypes. I'm a straight woman dating a straight male and even I felt a little alienated sometimes. We should do things like take our lunch breaks together? You mean people have long enough breaks to go meet up with people? We should book a hotel so we can have sex in some place other than our bedroom? Can we use our student loans to book that? I feel like there should have been less specific lifestyle tips (buy sexy underwear to flirt with him! Lift heavy things to flirt with her!) and more conversation and problem-resolving tips. I think as young adults our biggest problem isn't that our sex drives are tanking, but rather that we don't know.

I wasn't expecting a hardcover book, because apparently I'm bad at reading product descriptions. It's too big to put in my purse so I can read it on the train, which is where I do most of my reading. Oh well. I dealt with it. It seems like this book is designed to be read slowly, in short sessions. The pages are glossy and well-designed. The photography is good and only sometimes hilarious (see: The Bicycle Ride, a really awkward looking sex position where you rub your butts together. The boyfriend is a trooper and said we could try it, but his legs just don't..go that way). If leaving it out in the open didn't open you up to potentially awkward conversations with guests, I'd say this was a good coffee table book.

Mr. thrill and I were having a bit of a rough patch, so I thought reviewing this book would be more beneficial to our relationship than a sex toy. He offered to read it after I did, and would periodically ask me if I was learning anything. I think having those sort of normal conversations referencing our troubles and talking about personally working on fixing our relationship helped more than anything in the book. Most of the tips are fairly common sense. Dr. Berman tells you to do things like keep your promises, make an effort to keep flirting and to continue to surprise your partner so your relationship doesn't become boring.

Although, I did particularly like demanding to kiss for x number of seconds because "the relationship book says if we do this every day we'll stay together forever!"