I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido

I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido
By Joan Sewell
Broadway Books, 2007. 213 pages. Nonfiction

Welcome to the life of Joan, a low-libido woman in a relationship with Kip, a high-libido man. Joan thinks everything is going fine with her 3 times a month “false spontaneity” plan until she asks Kip how often he would like to have sex. The answer shocks her and sends her on a quest to step up her libido. She recounts with brutal and often hilarious honesty her attempts to try everything that the sexperts recommend, from spiritual mindfulness to wearing thongs. As each prescription fails to affect a cure, however, Joan starts wondering if anything is actually wrong with her and whether the “experts” she sees on TV know as much about women as they think they do.

This book was a page-turning, laugh-out-loud blast. I read the entire thing in pretty much one sitting because I couldn’t put it down. I was curious to see how each new “solution” would play out, and Joan’s conversational tone wrapped me up in her story. While she tends to show herself in a somewhat deprecating light and writes Kip as a martyr, both people come across as so real and relatable that you can’t help but find out what happens to them. Joan keeps a lively sense of humor throughout, so even the toughest topics keep from being too dark. I think this book is a marvelous manifesto on the libido gap between men and women, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in a modern rethink of the outdated Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

LLK