Tell Me What You Want

When this book was first published, I came across the author's AMA and thought was interesting. I was trying to get all my ebooks & audiobooks from the library at the time, so I recommended they add it to their collection. In 2020, they emailed me saying it's been added to their collection so I gave it a read. I had this big block of text written out for it's own separate review after finishing it a few months ago but never got around to posting it. I intend on doing more in-depth reviews of books as I finish them next year, unless I don't. Who knows?

Popular psychology books like this one are written for laymen. There's this small area between “edgy freshman psych student who thinks their references and jokes are funnier than they really are” and “just a phd thesis in book form” where I find pop-psy enjoyable to read. This book falls wayy off the cliff on the former side. The bad jokes, dumbed-down language, and prolific use of ‘I' & ‘my' delegitimized the research by emphasizing the author and his opinions. This was probably done because of the subject matter. But I did not enjoy that very much.

This book will help you understand that you're really not that weird for having fantasies or desires outside of what we were raised to believe is “normal”. The only thing I really got out of this book was: brief psychological explanations of why people have certain kinks & fantasies, and the percent of people surveyed who have certain kinks & fantasies. The rest was all stuff I already knew or bad jokes. It could have been boiled down into a research paper and I'd have liked it more. That's my kink: dry, humorless science articles about interesting topics.

I would recommend this book if you or your partner is interested, yet somewhat apprehensive, in expanding your romantic horizons, or if you just want to get a better understanding of the human condition with regards to sexuality, gender, and romantic fantasies.