Three Women, Lisa Taddeo - Review

Three Women (2019) may have been one of the most anticipated books of 2019 (and yes I am only reading it now... in 2020). Taddeo spent eight years tracking the three women who are the focus of the book; Maggie, Sloane and Lina and the risks they take to fulfil their sexual desires.

Each of the women go through different sexual experiences; Maggie has an inappropriate relationship with her teacher, Sloane's husband watches her with other men and Lina's husband refuses to touch her. The book is a very raw and real account of passion and desire.

I'm not going to lie this book took me a while to get into. This was mostly due to the fact that although the book is non-fiction, it's written in a really strange fictional, novelised way. I imagined it to be almost a report, or written like a study, but the language is more like something you would see in Fifty Shades Of Grey.
The book is written in third person, which feels really strange when the issues amongst the women are so personal. I wish the book would have been first person and written from their perspectives.

I did enjoy this book especially Maggie's chapter's which really broke my heart. But I found myself wanting more. The book is around 300 pages, which is averages at 100 pages per woman. This really doesn't feel like enough to justify eight years of research and Taddeo doesn't really reach any conclusions about the women's desires or sexual experiences. The book basically describes their lives and experiences without really drawing or gaining anything from it.

If you think of this book as a fictional, juicy, passionate piece of writing, you will love it because it delivers on providing that. But, whilst I appreciate what Taddeo was trying to achieve, I feel as though the book missed the mark. Instead of trying to understand the women, their experiences just become baselines for a scandalous novel.