Looking Inside is one of the best erotic contemporaries I’ve read in a really long time. It’s not a perfect book, but it worked for me on every level. I devoured it. Basically if I had to take a shot for every one of the Elyse-catnip elements that shows up in this book, I’d be on the floor singing “Red Solo Cup.” If you put this book under a box being held up by a stick, it would be an effective Elyse Trap.

It’s so much amaze that  I’m calling on Our Ladies of Music to help me tell you about its awesomesauce.

The book opens with Eleanor Briggs staying at her sister’s downtown Chicago condo. (Chicago is my favorite city ever. Take a shot.) When she stays in her sister’s guest room she can see the man in the apartment across the street having sex with the various women he brings home (apparently dude doesn’t know what curtains are, but okay). Said man is super hot, gives lots of orgasms, and is into dominance and submission. She watches him, fascinated and aroused.

Cut to a year later. Eleanor’s sister has tragically died and on her deathbed made Eleanor promise to try and come out of her shell and live a little. Eleanor views herself a mousy librarian (librarian heroine, take a shot), not very sexual or interesting, either – she’s a preservation and conversation librarian at a historical museum.

Eleanor! That’s super interesting! Also librarians are hella sexy. Honey, go to Tumblr, enter librarian in your search bar, and make sure you’re not at work cuz the pr0n will overwhelm you. Men and women totally make passes at girls who wear glasses.

So anyway, Eleanor decides to come out of her shell. She does a little light stalking and finds out that Smexy Dude is Trey Riordan, who is like a Myspace billionaire or something. Except he has a lot of free time for sex and working on his abs. Trey is going to be at a reading event sponsored by the museum where people show up for a few hours, ditch their tech, and commit to just sitting and reading a book (I want this. Take a shot). Eleanor shows up all sexified and reads an erotic novel while giving Trey a boner from across the room.

What is Trey reading? Pride and Prejudice because every woman he knows loves the book and he wants to see what the fuss is about. (Don’t bother with the shot glass. Take a swig right outta the bottle.)

On her way out, she drops off a note for him to be watching out his bedroom window at eleven that night. Trey does as she asks, and Eleanor puts on an incredibly sexy striptease for him. Trey is surprised that 1. sexy girl lives next door and 2. she’s doing an erotic striptease for him. He’s also SUPER INTO IT. Now he must know everything about this mysterious siren!

The book progresses to Eleanor and Trey having a sexual relationship. Much of it starts with Eleanor putting on a show for Trey and then him coming to her apartment to finish with sex. I found the voyeurism/ exhibitionism portions of this book to be fascinating, mostly because it’s a kink I don’t read a lot about. I would have thought that voyeurism would have been a passive thing, but it plays into the power dynamic Trey and Eleanor are exploring. Trey is into dominance and submission (mostly just being bossy – there’s a little spanking and bondage, but not much). When Eleanor starts her dance for him, he is forced to be the passive player and she is assuming control of their scene. Later that is reversed when they engage in sex and he assumes control.

More importantly, Eleanor’s exhibitionism is a way for her to communicate without words her desires to Trey so that he can then make those a reality. It allows her to start the scene in control, from a place she feels safe, communicate what she needs, and then for Trey to fulfill that.

Man, that got kind of clinical and killed the sexiness a bit. Here’s Rihanna doing that effortless combination of hot, adorable, and charming:

Another element I enjoyed was that while they are exploring their sexuality together, Eleanor and Trey also explore Chicago together. They both acknowledge that even as residents, they don’t know or enjoy their city enough (travel romance, take a shot).

So where’s the conflict? That’s why this book gets an B+. Trey’s conflict is weak at best. Not unlike a lot of erotic romance heroes, his issue is that he doesn’t do commitment and all the relationships he’s had before have made him feel like women were trying to trap into a commitment he didn’t want.

Right. We’re all trying to cage your magic penis, Trey. Get over yourself.

Eleanor’s conflict is legit. She’s mentally cast herself in the role of boring librarian, and she feels like the sexually liberated person that she is with Trey is an act. It’s major imposter syndrome (take a shot).  She’s afraid that if Trey discovers that she’s not this hyper-sexual, perfectly made up person all of the time he won’t want her. Like if he sees her in the stacks pushing her glasses up her face his boner will permanently die. She’s only comfortable in their relationship as Sexy Eleanor not Actual Person Eleanor.

ELEANOR YOU CAN BE BOTH!

Eleanor’s journey is learning that you don’t have to be sexy all of the time. You can be sexual and mysterious and a femme fatale, and also a “normal” person. You get to be complex and nuanced and don’t have to apologize for shit. It doesn’t help that Eleanor’s family and friend’s don’t know what to make of her new persona or clothes and feel like it may be  a byproduct of grief from the loss of her much more extroverted sister.

Also there’s the usual erotic romance plotline of “we started this as just sex and now we have feelings HALP.”

In summation, we have a heroine who is on a journey of self realization that she gets to be both sexy and powerful and still fundamentally the person she always was. We get lots of erotic sexytimes. We get a hero who reads Pride and Prejudice. We get Elyse passed out on the floor from too many shots.

Reader: