Review by Booklist Review
Translated from the Hebrew, Kessler's darkly romantic debut made a best-selling splash in Israel in 2022. Filmmaker Noa impresses guests at her friends' wedding with her video celebrating the couple. Most importantly, she impresses imposing, older Teddy Rosenfeld. It's scorching-hot love at first sight for narrator Noa and presumably for Teddy, who keeps his cards close but quickly gives Noa a job making promotional videos for his biotech firm and follows her to bed. Everything cocky Teddy does turns Noa on, even (especially?) when he resists her obsession with him. Their diverging life stages, baggage, and communication styles keep them on different pages, though. Noa, never married and without children, hasn't spoken to her mother in decades. Teddy, meanwhile, has three ex-wives. two young-adult sons, and no interest, he asserts, in anything serious. Actions speak louder though, and there's plenty of those as Noa and Teddy fight, meddle, make demands, scare themselves and each other, and surrender to their devastating erotic connection. Sex, drama, and Noa's funny, confessional narration and dialogue with Teddy keep the pages flying.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Kessler's raw if uneven debut, a couple negotiate their possibly destructive obsession with each other. When aspiring filmmaker Noa Simon meets Teddy Rosenfeld at a wedding in Tel Aviv, their attraction is immediate. Teddy, CEO at a production company, hires her to make promotional films, and they embark on a professional and romantic relationship. Noa is infatuated with the "beautiful, fat, sexy, despicable" Teddy, who is as financially generous as he is emotionally withholding ("My entire existence is reduced to the need for being the object of his desire, and all other components of life become redundant," Noa narrates). Turns out they both have mother issues: Noa is estranged from hers, while Teddy reveres his, maintaining her apartment as a "mausoleum," according to Noa, after her death. As the relationship progresses, Teddy's reticence, insistence on control, and imperious meddling eventually push Noa to her breaking point. The novel tends to drag when the two lovers are apart, but the characters come alive during the sex scenes, their desire for each other radiating off the page. Outside the bedroom (or the bathroom, or the stairwell, or the car), the story gives off less heat. This one overstays its welcome. Agent: Deborah Harris & Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs, Deborah Harris Agency. (Nov.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An erotic obsession becomes all-consuming for a female Israeli filmmaker. Kessler's debut is an X-rated deep dive into the overwhelming fascination of a 36-year-old narrator named Noa Simon with a "fat man dressed in a white shirt--or, on second glance, pink--one button excessively undone, exposing a hint of his tanned chest." This is Teddy Rosenfeld, whom Noa meets at a wedding. He and his business partner, Richard Harrington, are so impressed with a video Noa has made as part of the entertainment that they suggest she come work for them at their marine biotech firm. As the wedding reception progresses, Noa and Teddy smoke cigarettes together, go to the bathroom and pee together, and flirt with each other almost violently, though Teddy stops Noa's game far short of what she's hoping for. As they part, Noa sends a final salvo: "There's no woman in this world, in your entire life, who's wanted you as much as I want you." Over the next almost-400 pages, the force of Noa's desire will generate a ferocious sexual affair, conducted as she becomes an employee of Delmar Bio Solutions and gradually overcomes Teddy's resistance, increasingly involving herself in his complicated personal life, which includes multiple children and ex-wives. Noa is a wild, angry, difficult woman; Teddy is a big, sexy mensch women are crazy for; and Kessler portrays their relationship, their conversations, their sex, and their arguments with abandon--behind Noa's obsession with Teddy is Kessler's obsession with both of them. As the drama goes on and on, digging toward the aspects of their lives that the couple are withholding from each other--in Noa's case, her estrangement from her mother; in Teddy's, a "situation" with his second wife--the experience of reading it is a bit like sex that goes on too long. (Beige. I should paint the ceiling beige.) But obsession is as obsession does. An unruly addition to the literature of passion that might have worked better as a novella. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
