Stevie‘s review of Eight Kinky Nights by Xan West
Contemporary Lesbian and Asexual Holiday Romance published by Xan West 16 Dec 19
Although I’m seeing more romances with characters who place themselves at various points on the asexual spectrum – and with these characters portrayed as having valid identities, rather than as needing to be ‘fixed’ by the right partner – I’ve seen very few in which one character identifies as stone butch (or any other variant of stone, for that matter). And while neurodivergent characters are becoming more common, they also tend to not get paired together, but rather with a neurotypical character. Consequently this book appealed for many reasons, in addition to the fact that it’s a holiday romance not centred around a Christian celebration, and also features two characters who are close to my age.
Jordan has recently divorced, following a long marriage in which she suppressed many of her curiosities about BDSM and kink, and has moved to New York to stay with her longstanding best friend Leah, who has never made any secret of her own sexual interests, given that she owns a sex toy store and runs workshops on a range of aspects of kink. What Leah has yet to tell Jordan, however, is that she has recently reached the realisation that she is grey ace on the asexual spectrum, and has been exploring how that aspect of her identity impacts on her identity as a femme submissive and on her enjoyment of different types of scene.
Early in her visit with Leah, Jordan reveals that she has always wanted to express her identity as a stone butch top in kink settings, but that her ex-wife had shut down any attempts that she made at discussions of those feelings (Jordan’s ex-wife is emotionally abusive and bigoted in a range of other ways too). Leah suggests that she would be a safe person for Jordan to explore kink with, prior to branching out into dating new people, and that Leah could devise a series of lessons for Jordan as a set of eight Chanukah gifts. We then follow the two on their respective voyages of discovery as they learn more about their individual identities and fall in love.
I love that this book features the butch/femme dynamic between two autistic characters and didn’t shy away from exploring exactly what all of that meant to each of them. I adore that we get to meet a range of very different trans* and non-binary characters and see a variety of relationship styles, many of them polyamorous. There were occasions when the book felt a bit too much like a primer in aspects of kink, gender, and sexuality that I’m already familiar with, but I did learn a few things.
Overall, this book had a lot of representation to cover, given how few other books are currently out there that touch on some of its main themes. I want to read more by this author, both fiction and factual, and have started digging into their blog already.
Grade: B
Summary:
Sometimes the perfect Chanukah gift can change everything.
Newly divorced stone butch Jordan moves into her friend Leah’s spare room, ready, at 49, to take on a new job and finally explore kink and polyamory. But moving to NYC during the holidays sends grief crashing through her, and Jordan realizes that when she isn’t solely focused on caring for others, her own feelings are unavoidable. Including her feelings for Leah.
51 year old queer femme Leah, an experienced submissive kink educator who owns a sex shop, has recently come to terms with being gray ace and is trying to rework her life and relationships to honor that.
Leah has a brainstorm to help them both: she offers Jordan eight kink lessons, one for each night of Chanukah, to help Jordan find her feet as a novice dominant, and to create a structured space where Leah can work on more deeply honoring her own consent, now that she knows she’s gray ace.
She’d planned to keep it casual, but instead the experience opens cracks in the armor Leah’s been using to keep people at a distance and keep herself safe. Now she needs to grapple with the trauma that’s been impacting her life for years.
Can these two autistic queers find ways to cope with the changes they are making in their lives and support each other, as they build something new they hadn’t thought was possible?
This kinky polyamorous Chanukah f/f romance includes a friends to lovers, roommates to lovers, kink lessons, seasoned romance and getting your groove back tropes, and polyamorous, gray ace, pansexual, Jewish, fat, autistic, disabled, arthritis, PTSD and depression representation.
Read an excerpt.
