Rosie DananRezensionen

I adored this book.

So, I really enjoyed The Roommate and Clara's story was a good intro to these characters. Her's was a fish out of water story. The Intimacy Experiment, however, is a much more mature story. What I mean is Naomi and Ethan are adult that are established in their careers and have overcome different challenges a human can expect to experience by the time you are in your thirties. So, where Clara was uncertain about herself and who she is in the world often asking for permission to take up space. Naomi knows who she is and where she belongs. She takes what belongs to her and does not rely on anyone to give it to her.

ALSO - this book is very Jew-y. I love Jewish representation - especially representation of someone who lives a religious life. There were a few parts of the book that felt authentic and if you are Jewish or a member of a minority group, you can appreciate the author including these scenes (JCC's needing security for instance).

Anyway - I loved this book!

I loved this slow-burn romance. Also, the supporting characters were developed.

This is the paranormal, historical, set-in-Scotland, hate-sex-having romance novel you didn't know you needed. Curse-breaker Riley butts heads with academic archaeologist Clark Scotland over, well, EVERYTHING. Their first meeting at a pub is all chemistry and sweetness, but when Riley overhears Clark dissing her profession the next morning when she shows up on location to start her job, she discovers the hottie from last night is the one insulting her, and the dude the the historical association sent to do some due diligence excavation.

While I do occasionally branch out and read witchy/occult romance, curse-breaking is a new profession for me to see featured in romance (give a listen to the Somewhere In Between episode of Book Riot's When in Romance podcast for a great discussion of occupations they'd like to see in romance novels --oy vey, so many bakeries and bookshops!). Do Your Worst features amazing, researched, and believable details about curse-breaking, and I loved the concept of the curse having a life of it's own. Riley totally employs the scientific method in her work. In addition to the romance, family relationships are complicated and resolutions attempted, demonstrating true, realistic character growth.

Things to love about Rosie Danan's superb writing: feisty, unapologetic heroines; broadly-defined sex; pop culture references; boundary-setting; love for Philadelphia, PA; snarky humor and great banter; addressing vulnerabilities; all the gory details; a 10-page description of the MMC jerking off while thinking about the FMC...

I don't want to give too much away, so will leave you with this: if you love Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 2 Episode 19 "I Only Have Eyes for You" was in fact directly referenced) or Outlander (book or show) for their particular winning blend of occult, history, methodical and detailed science, and herbalism/magic, this is a great novel for you to pick up. It hard a bit of slow start for me, and I ended up devouring it over two days.

I received a free advance reader's review copy of #DoYourWorst from #NetGalley.
https://hiplibrariansbookblog.com/2023/07/14/do-your-worst-by-rosie-danan/

This is a VERY VERY VERY x-rated book and I did not know that before I got it.

Cute cover and roommates to romance was enough for me to assume that I’d like it. Was NOT counting on the main character to be a porn actor nor did I expect the plot to revolve around creating a new kind of porn website. So yeah, LOTS of sex scenes, lots of talk about sex and sex workers.

The whole message of the book is that sex is not shameful and sex workers are real people and not degenerates. So good message and not typical of a romance novel but not completely my cup of tea either.

(edited to change my first sentence: at first I called it a dirty book but lesson learned: sex is not dirty! Words matter!)

Talk about a 180 degree switch, this is what happens to Clara when she finally decides to face her feelings about Everett, the boy, now a man, who she's crushed on for the last fourteen years. After abandoning a safe and straight laced career that would dovetail with her advanced degree in art, to see what might happen with him in Los Angeles, she's dumped almost as soon as she arrives. He's rented out the room she was to have to some gut named Josh, and is going on tour with his band. Clara's left to figure out her life as well as how to get along with the mysterious guy renting the room.
When she discovers that he's a very popular porn star, she's initially shocked and a bit put off, but those feelings change to curiosity and intrigue. Once the sparks between them kindle to a slow burn, things get extremely interesting. Josh feels increasingly frustrated by the confines and pitiful pay from the contract he signed with a very shady production company.
When Clara makes an impulsive decision to back a completely new enterprise, one that hopefully will create educational sex videos that will help women have better orgasms and both sexes shed shame, it's the start of a most interesting journey. It includes her discovering just how well her body responds under the right circumstances, threats from the baddies at his former studio, and a complete turnaround in a tight race for D.A. in the city. Very satisfying in both the steam and story line departments.

Riley Rhodes has finally started using her talent for breaking curses as a business, charging clients for her services. Her next assignment involves a Scottish castle with a curse dating back hundreds of years. What she doesn't expect is to arrive and discover that she will have to work with Clark Edgeware, disgraced archeologist, who is trying to reestablish his reputation and doesn't believe in curses. He works hard to get rid of Riley, but before long he not only realizes that she may be an asset in his work, but she also triggers feelings he never knew he was capable of having.

Do Your Worst has an interesting premise, pairing a scientist with a purveyor of the occult, however, the story doesn't live up to its promise. While the mystery of the castle is fun, the characters are flat, making it difficult to relate to or care about them. Their relationship seems contrived and friendship unrealistic in a plot that already struggles to be believable. Although there is some banter and humor, a more heavy dose of each would have improved the story greatly. Overall, Do Your Worst develops a unique idea but doesn't provide enough substance to make it a true success.½

Riley is the perfect blend of snark and insecurity. She inherited her grandmother's ability and destiny to identify and break curses. While she takes pride in that ability, it doesn't pay the bills, forcing her to moonlight as a bartender. It's also a romance killer, leaving her lonely much of the time. When she's hired to break a 300 year old curse in a Scottish castle, it could be her big break. Unfortunately, she has competition in the form of Clark, an archaeologist still smarting from the scandal surrounding his last project. He's equally determined to prove himself by finding proof of ancient artifacts. They start hot and heavy when they meet at the inn where she's staying, but the next morning when she overhears him disparaging the 'sham' cursebreaker brought to the castle, it sours everything...but the spark refuses to be extinguished. How the two of them warily begin to realize they need to work together makes for a delightful and quite steamy tale.

I absolutely loved Danan's first two books, The Roommate and The Intimacy Experiment. In addition to being fun and sexy, they were fresh and the characters were semi-relatable. This book was not fresh, often not particularly fun, and the characters were not remotely relatable. Also, the book was just badly crafted. The narrative arc was more like an EKG readout. Something happens, then something else happens, then another something else happens. I feel like she had an outline and did not realize that one needs to connect the events on the outline, not just throw them on the page.

A quick summary, which I think will explain why this did not work. Riley, the FMC, is a professional "curse-breaker" and South Philly bartender (as one is.) Grant, the MMC, is an Oxford-trained anthropologist. They meet up at a cursed Scottish castle after she is hired (I never understood by whom?) to break the curse and he to document the cursed site. The curse is one of lovers parted and to break the curse the rift between them must be ended. (The reader is told this is the case, I have no foundational knowledge in curse-breaking.) This is set up as an enemies-to-lovers romance, but the execution is way off. To start, the leads try to get one another to leave the project in the stupidest most illogical ways, which both center on emotional devastation. Intentionally eliciting a trauma response is not sexy, even if you feel bad about it, and I could not really get from there to a trusting and loving relationship. Things go awry in a number of ways that bring up family trauma. Riley and Grant have a lot of good dirty semi-violent (very clearly consensually so) sex, though it is hard to imagine why that happens, There is not adequate setup for the irresistible attraction. That issue is compounded by the roughness of the sex, which requires some trust to be hot, and here any shred of trust has been destroyed by the cruelty of their emotional nuclear war. To top it off, some of the sex is mission-driven, which is weird and creepy. Then a bunch of stuff just happens. Townspeople become fairy godmothers, parents, including one utterly narcissistic one, suddenly become supportive and lovely, cats attack, people are reunited, and there is an HEA that involves the attack cat. If some of the sex scenes had not been hot and to my particular tastes this would be a 2. Come back to me Rosie Danan!!!½

Riley Rhodes finally has the chance to turn her family’s knack for the supernatural into a legitimate business when she’s hired to break the curse on an infamous Scottish castle. Used to working alone in her alienating occupation, she's pleasantly surprised to meet a handsome stranger upon arrival—until he tries to get her fired.

Fresh off a professional scandal, Clark Edgeware can’t allow a self-proclaimed “curse breaker” to threaten his last chance for redemption. After he fails to get Riley kicked off his survey site, he vows to avoid her. Unfortunately for him, she vows to get even.

Riley expects the curse to do her dirty work by driving Clark away, but instead, they keep finding themselves in close proximity. Too close. Turns out, the only thing they do better than fight is fool around. If they’re not careful, by the end of all this, more than the castle will end up in ruins.

It's not a bad book, it just wasn't for me.
Girl from a rich socialite family is set to move across the country where no one knows her name, with a friend from childhood that she has been crushing on forever. Dude happens to be an asshole and instead he goes off on tour with his band and leaves her to room with a stranger who he found online last minute. (Seriously sketchy as shit, but for the sake of the story our guy is a good guy).
Our guy has a job that is..uh shall we say, frowned upon in polite society. So our girl is now at risk of scandal by just living in the same house. And then it just tumbles from there.

I like the idea of how it ends, just not how it was written how it ends. Perhaps because I have no connection to a socialite or upper east coast family so our FMC and I did not connect. I was more connected to the MMC and like his whole story in everything. I liked his part of the story for sure.
6/10

This had been on top of my tbr folder for a very long time and I am excited I finally got to read it :) It tells the story of Clara and Josh who happens to be in the adult entertainment industry. It was a fun read but if I am being very honest the standouts in the book were Naomi (her book is already on my list for next year) and the steamy scenes.

Fundamentally there was just something slightly missing in the OTP's relationship development. I liked their banter but never got the emotional connection fully. I can't believe that I am complaining that a couple fell in love too quickly but I am? LOL. I also wish we had seen some more fall-out from Clara's folks seeing how much their approval had influenced her all her life.

All in all, a good book which I'm sure fans of romances should enjoy.

I stumbled on this through someone mentioning it in their instagram reel - maybe even the author, I'm not entirely sure? And I was looking for a relatively mindless book to read to pass the time (really fun NYE, I know). This was a pretty good one, and like some others I went in with a relatively low bar set for it.

It was relatively insta-love, but I mean, it was a pretty strong hook for insta-love. (I'm usually not a fan of insta-love because there's not a logical reason as to why x would fall in love with z, but here they share a pretty intimate scene and then things cascade from there.)

While there was s*x, there was less of it than the plot itself lends to, I think maybe 4 scenes in all between the FMC and love interest? I'm not complaining, not a bad thing, but for folks who say or think this is particularly smutty...it's maybe in the 60-70th percentile?

I'm also entirely here for a few of the tropes this author has flipped, namely with both of the exes of each of the MCs - I won't spoil it, because I think it's a nice little twist.

Good read. Worth a few hours of your time.

So y'all remember how I, the asexual, passionately dislike reading sex scenes in the middle of my romance novels?

Well, this one gets a pass. This has sex scenes but I didn't even mind that it had sex scenes because I bought into the characters and their desires.

This was lots of fun but with some great messaging too. Shameless all the way!

I think I overhyped this a bit to myself because I loved THE ROOMMATE as this wasn't as mind-blowingly brilliant as I expected. But it was still a lot of fun and really sweet (though the premise wasn't quite what I expected) and I found the portrayl of religion a really interesting and productive one for a modern setting.

I really love how this book mixed romance with looking at love through a spiritual context. I also loved the H/h and the journeys they went on. Hope we see more of Leah.

I wanted to like this, but mostly I just kept laughing at the ridiculousness of the smutty scenes.

Also, I feel so sorry for the female lead for the incredible impediment of having big tits and a fat ass while still being petite. I can totally see how those would make a woman think no man could ever want her sexually in today's society.

All in all this was a cute book although I will say that I almost DNF at the beginning. Much of the book was very formulaic and the writing was a bit off. I think the author was trying for more humour but I found it often fell flat. I was also really annoyed at the beginning at the jump very early on to sexual contact between Clara and Josh with very little lead up, which I thought was unrealistic based on Clara's character at that point. That being said, although predictable, there were some cute moments in the book that made up for the issues and pushed this from 2 stars to 3 stars.

He was just a little too quick to be so accepting of her previous life as a sex worker. But interesting read just because the characters were so different. (He's a rabbi.)

I was pretty disappointed because this book contains one of my least favorite tropes - "before you I had only bad sex". I hate this.
On the other hand it has forced proximity which I love.
Also Claire was insufferable. I hated her after their grocery shopping where she was throwing out his snacks out of the cart. why are you trying to control other people's bodies?
Also the fact that he's a porn star and he don't work in porn for this whole book? isn't that the point? I want to read about healthy boundaries and communication. I wanted for them to discuss his job without unnecessary jealousy.
This book tries to be sex positive, but at the same time shows so much stigma around it (which is realistic, but idc).
And I'm not a fan of big gestures in books so that didn't work for me either.
I think for me this is borderline WF, even though romance is a big part of the story.

I really liked this opposites-attract romance. Not without problems, as you can find in many other reviews, but I liked it a lot and I'm honestly too lazy at this point to write a second review. :)

Full review for Shelf Awareness.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review via NetGalley.

Naomi Grant has built her business, Shameless, giving advice to people about sex using her psychology degree and experience as a porn star, but she longs for a face to face forum where she can teach people directly. Just when she thinks nobody will ever take her seriously, she is approached at a symposium by Rabbi Ethan Cohen to teach a series of seminars on intimacy to not only provide education but to also bring more young people into Ethan's financially strapped synagogue. Although the seminars are controversial, they succeed in expanding attendance at Shabbat. As Naomi and Ethan spend more time together, they begin to recognize that the attraction the feel for one another is not going away, and it is getting stronger.

The Intimacy Experiment is a realistic story about the problems associated with modern religion, and the representation of the Jewish religion is well done. Naomi and Ethan seem like opposites, but in reality, they are very much alike. Even though the book is slow in some places and a bit long, it does develop the characters and situations in ways that are very believable. Overall, The Intimacy Experiment is nice, enjoyable read.

Very possibly my favorite modern genre romance ever -- perhaps tied with Beach Read. A rabbi and a retired porn star! Filled to the brim with Jewish wisdom and a real look at the difference between fucking and intimacy (not that both cannot be delightful as the book makes clear.) I was slightly squicked by the fact that my son shares the hero's name and his physical description, but that is my issue. Their personalities are sort of similar too except that my kid is 10 years younger and balances the avid acquisition of knowledge with boxing and MMA so he may have killed a few brain cells the book Ethan used to his advantage but he would have successfully taken down a creep or two in bar fights if need be. For readers who don't have Jewish sons named Ethan who are under 5'10" (average height for a white guy in the US) with brown hair and blue eyes who work out and read a lot about philosophy this is a total home run.

Really charming, smart, feminist, and super sexy. This is explicitly sexy, and accurately so. Danan does not couch arousal, or grinding/ licking/thrusting action, or orgasm in metaphor. Also great sex is not necessarily equated with great love, though there is great love and it is expressed in some of the sexual activity which is a wonderful avenue to express such things. I loved this super sex-positive lens. I also loved the focus on clear and honest communication even when it is uncomfortable. Extra points for the respect for smart and directed sex workers. Also, though I am an old lady now so my memory might be fuzzy, I felt like Danan really nailed what it is like to be in your late 20's after emerging from the cocoon of academia and then having to figure out who you want to be. This is a 4.5 for me. I loved it, smiled the whole time, and thought about how much I wanted to get back to it when I was doing other things, so total 5 star in that sense. A couple issues - minor in the scheme of things -- Clara's family was silly. It's like she cribbed how old money families work from repeat viewings of Succession. Because Danan created really authentic characters in Josh and Clara, these characters felt particularly tin-eared. I would add to that my disappointment at the oversimplification of Naomi's decision to go into sex work. I don't want to spoil anything so I will just say that being victimized in public ways has repercussions, but one event does not wash away everything that came before. Relatedly, I am so excited the next book will focus on Naomi and a RABBI!!! This appears to have been conceived and written specifically for me. I cannot wait.

3.5 stars

Ok so I enjoyed this, but I felt that there was so much unexplored stuff going on that I’m disappointed too. Naomi and Ethan both had so much baggage and backstory, and I oddly felt like their relationship happened out of the blue; even though it felt super slow as well. I guess it was just so different than most romances that I’m confused if it’s supposed to be one (I mean what other romances have a reader’s guide in them?); maybe that’s my issue here, but I definitely feel as though something has been missed.