(Again.) Their forced intimacy is of the subtype “shared project,” one of my very favorite subtypes, as it offers them the opportunity to get to know each other in a low-pressure way as they each slowly realize the other person is their ideal partner. Ethan is a very gentle soul who just wants to achieve his goal of building a warm, inclusive congregation, and Naomi has spent years hardening her heart against other people in the certain knowledge that to do otherwise would be to allow herself to be hurt. To nobody’s surprise, I melted like an M&M for this angry woman / soft man pairing. They’ve built the syllabus for love’s latest experiment, but neither of them expected they’d be the ones putting it to the test. Naomi and Ethan join forces to host a buzzy seminar series on Modern Intimacy, the perfect solution to their problems–until they discover a new one–their growing attraction to each other. Low on both funds and congregants, the executive board of Ethan’s new shul hired him with the hopes that his nontraditional background will attract more millennials to the faith. They’ve given him three months to turn things around or else they’ll close the doors of his synagogue for good. Unfortunately, despite her long list of qualifications, higher ed won’t hire her.Įthan Cohen has recently received two honors: LA Mag nominated him as one of the city’s hottest bachelors and he became rabbi of his own synagogue. After the sex-positive start-up she cofounded becomes an international sensation, she wants to extend her educational platform to live lecturing. Naomi Grant has built her life around going against the grain. Both books feature protagonists who are sex workers, which kind of rules? Apart from Aya de Leon’s romantic suspense series, of which I have read the first two, and A Gentleman Undone by Cecilia Grant, I don’t know that I’ve ever read a romance novel with a sex worker protagonist. The Intimacy Experiment is the second Rosie Danan book I’ve read, and it is far more the book of my heart than the first one (for reasons I’ll get into ).

The Intimacy Experiment by Rosie Danan