Faking It
by Rebecca Smith
Published by One More Chapter
Meet Hannah Thompson: wife, mother, teacher and… secret erotica author?
My Guilt List:
1. If we have a date night then I’m always asleep before it’s halfway through and honestly, if I had to choose, I’d rather have a hot bath and read my book than engage in any other nocturnal activity.
2. If we do actually have you-know-what then it’s not unheard of for my mind to wander… and I’m not talking about sexy things – I’m talking about what food there is in the fridge and when the car is due for its next service.
3. I am struggling to write about anything that could be classed as even a little bit sexually adventurous which is a problem when I’m supposed to be an erotica writer and I am speaking at Sex Con in exactly one month.
With a book to publicize, Hannah has no choice but trade her M&S cardis for S&M parties, and become her writing alter-ego. What could possibly go wrong…
Genre
I would like to thank #OneMoreChapter for sending me an #ARC of #FakingIt by #RebeccaSmith, in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Faking It by Rebecca Smith is centered around 44 year old Hannah Thompson, mother of three, wife, part-time English teacher, and secretly, a newly published erotica writer. Faking It follows Hannah, struggling to balance her family life, with her secret alter egos life.
Faking It was a little out of the box compared to what I normally read. That description lured me in, though, and I had to request it. As a married woman in my early thirties, with also three kids, this book was incredibly relatable. Put aside the published author bit, and what Hannah goes through is what every woman goes through at some point in their lives, including me. It's hard to feel sexy when one is changing diapers, cleaning house, raising humans that other people can stand to be around, and working a job that doesn't give you much fulfillment. Not only do you struggle with yourself, your spouse, and children, but it can feel incredibly lonely. This book is a way to not only highlight that, hey, everyone goes through this, and yes, its okay, but it also kind of takes a dig at the erotica genre. In a good way. Sex in books is often ... okay, 99% of the time, romanticized. It can make the reader question if they are doing it right in real life. What Faking It does is throw that out of the window. Sex can be messy and awkward and thats okay.
I liked the realness of this book. The humor infused with situations that, if it was happening to you, you wouldn't find that funny, made me laugh out loud quite a few times. That being said, I wasn't an overall fan of the writing style. I hate when I feel like I am reading someone's rambling thoughts, which reading this book was. Even if some of those thoughts were pretty funny. I found it too long for the story that it was telling, and a lot of it wasn't moving the story along. The characters were all written very colorfully, and just like kids in real life, Hannah's kids came off as a bit annoying as well. Her husband Nick is written as a wonderful, doting husband, who is the calm to Hannah's storm of anxieties.
In the end, while I enjoyed some aspects of Faking It, I didn't enjoy it enough to give it a higher rating. It was a bit too slow paced for me, which led to me reading a few chapters, only to put it down for more interesting reading. That being said, though, Rebecca Smith nailed what it sometimes feels like as a woman who is expected to run the world, while still feeling like a sex goddess, while injecting a fun, lighthearted humor that, in Hannah's crazy life, is needed.
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