Dear Delilah - T. Bester Review

Thank you to the publisher for allowing to review a copy of the ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“It has been said that boys and girls can never be ‘just’ friends, and until Nathan Penn barged into my life, I thought it was complete and utter nonsense. But one night changed everything, and what I thought was the defining moment in our friendship turned out to be more than either of us were ready for.
When my boss tasks me with writing the University’s new sex advice column, Dear Delilah, I make it quite clear that I’m the least qualified person for the job - my experience is limited to one sexual encounter that taught me about love and loss all at once.
So what makes me say ‘yes’?  Simple. A distraction. Something to take my mind off Nathan.
But once I start, I find myself wanting to be the voice of the girl who’s too afraid to ask for advice, the girl who wants to own her sexuality but doesn’t know how. Sounds easy enough.
Except it isn’t.
It’s complicated, and messy and awkward, and when Nathan offers to help, I’m caught between a rock and his hard place. Literally. It's only when my identity is threatened that I realize I might be in over my head. With all of it.”

This is a new adult romance and is told in Dual POV; from the POV of Savannah who is currently at college and interning at her College’s newspaper whilst she figures out what she wants to major in. And also from the POV of Nathan who is her Best friend, also works at the paper and is supposedly your typical womanising, buff jock-type guy. This starts with Nathan and Savannah not talking and you know that something has happened to make them fall-out but you don’t know what has actually caused it. You find out what made them ‘fall-out’ through flash backs from them both in the first half of the book and follow on from that to see if they can re-build their relationship at all. 

I really enjoyed the side-plot of Savannah writing the “Dear Delilah” column for the College newspaper and I felt that it explored some great points to do with feminism and sexual equality for women and putting how you feel first. “Dear Delilah” is the paper’s sex advice column and within the book we see Savannah writing some of the columns for this segment and doing research for the column. It explores topics like the female orgasm, sleeping with someone on the first date, strage sexual injuries and how men can sleep with a load of girls and be a ‘lad’ but if a girl does it she’s a slut. It was great to see these things discussed within the book within the plot itself and I felt like it was actually quite educational and empowering too!

I didn’t feel like there was that much chemistry between Nathan and Savannah but I feel like this may be because they already had an intimate relationship before they fell-out. Whilst we still a few flashback of this intimate relationship, it wasn’t enough to build any chemistry between them as they were just short flashbacks. However, this didn’t take away from the sex scenes and they were still very steamy.

The issue I had with this book was that despite it including a lot of great topic as mentioned above, there was a part in the book where she is doing some research for her column and her roommate Zoe walks in on her googling some, er, interesting things. Savannah obviously tries to cover up what she’s doing and make her roommate not think she’s some porn obsessed girl etc but the way she says it is ridiculous;

“But I also don’t want Zoe thinking I’m some porno freak who gets off on watching other people bumping uglies.” And that is quickly followed by a “Not that there’s anything wrong with people who are into that kind of thing” like that makes what she thought better! It just threw me as the rest of the book was so empowering and covered such great topics and then there was just that totally crappy comment about how watching porn makes you a porno freak. The way it’s said also makes it seem like there’s something wrong with watching porn and getting off from it when it’s actually a totally normal thing and so many people will do it. The way the “Not that there’s anything wrong with people who are into that kind of thing” is chucked on the end like it makes it somehow better really annoyed me too – that doesn’t make what you said ok. Grrrr, that comment really bugged me and has really stuck with me through the book. 

The other thing as that Savannah was cast as this shy, innocent girl who was a virgin and completely new to all things sex-wise. Yet she blushes when talking about sex and all things sexual for gods sake, YET she has both her nipples pierced?! That seemed so random and just so unlike and out of character for someone who is shy to have? Maybe that’s just me stereotyping, but the way that Savannah is portrayed in the book and then the pierced nipples just didn’t match for me. Although she also goes on a great rant near the middle of the book about her being a “sexual being” also and it just didn’t tie up with the way she’ portrayed for the rest of the book.

There were a few timeline inconsistencies but I’m going to put this down to being an ARC copy as there were also a few spelling and grammatical errors so hopefully these will be fixed in the final copy.

Overall I really enjoyed this and thought it was a good story-line with an even greater side-plot which was dealt with in a really positive way. I’m interested to see where the next book goes and what other topics are brought up and discussed for Dear Delilah! I really hope that the next book also follows Savannah and Nathan because I want to see how their relationship progresses and again more of the column! I want to know if it causes any more problems or what other research they need to get up to, to help the column! This was such a fun read with an important message or messages put across fantastically. 

(PS. I really love the cover! It’s nice to see a pretty girl instead of the abs that we’re used to for the usual new adult books!)