10 Contemporary Books About Women in Complex Romantic Power Dynamics
There’s a certain genre of book that consistently hits my literary G-spot, though I haven’t figured out a punchy name for it: “Self-aware women in dysfunctional-yet-sexy relationships”? “Contemporary bisexual women grappling with their identity and interest in power play”? “Wicked-smart-yet-erotic books that help me feel less strange in my sexual psychology?” “Complex, nuanced depictions of non-monogamy, kink, and gaslighting?” “Women in the throws of romantic infatuation and obsession?”
Whatever you want to call it, I just know it when I read it. It’s a feeling tone and voice, more than anything else. It’s an echo and a mirror. It’s a dismantling of shame.
The ten books below are some of my recent favorites in this vein. I wanted to put a list together for other readers who also love this very specific genre. If you’ve already read and enjoyed at least one book on this list, I feel safe saying that you are very likely to enjoy the others. The tones, themes, and level of intelligence in each of them are well-matched.
My Education
This book took me a few chapters to really sink into, but once I did, I enjoyed it on so many levels. The prose is absolutely brilliant and insightful, and the characters are deeply lived in. This is the story of a bisexual grad student intoxicated (in very different ways) with two married professors at her school. If you love writers like Rachel Cusk for their long-and-gripping sentences, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you are a writer, simply reading this will make you more psychologically and semantically attuned. Choi is a master of character development.
Quote: “What was I afraid of? Losing her. What alone quelled that fear? Having her. So the woe and its cure locked their horns, each gaining what inches the other gave up, until finally cure muscled forth and I wailed and shook in her arms. But afterward as we languorously dressed the forewarning stayed with me.”
Vladamir
It’s not just the fantastic cover of this book that’s worthy of authorial envy. The prose is exacting, hilarious, and even sexy. It’s really entertaining to be inside the protagonist’s mind — she’s an older professor who decides to seduce a younger (also married) teacher. Not only is this book about the nature of romantic obsession and projection, but it’s also about complex gender politics in a “post-Me Too” collegiate era. Jonas exposes hypocrisy in many forms and isn’t afraid to probe questions that are taboo, with characters that say what many people are secretly thinking.
Quote: “Compliments made you supplicant, equal, and master all at once. Supplicant because you are below, admiring; equal because you have the same taste; and master because you are bestowing your approval. In my life I’ve been wounded more by compliments than I have by insults. (Once when I asked an acquaintance what they thought of my second novel they said, “I can tell you worked so hard on it.”)”
Acts of Service
This provocative book is about a woman who has previously only been in lesbian relationships who becomes infatuated with a dominant cis man (and to some degree, his female partner). It’s a complex story of non-monogamy, triangulation, queerness, BDSM, and the nature of desire. It makes you angry in moments — it is not PC. More importantly, it will make you think, challenging your assumptions and sexual politics. If you like Vladimir for its willingness to go there, you will probably respect this book. I especially recommend this novel to queer, non-monogamous, and kinky people who want to see flawed, nuanced explorations of their sexuality.
Quote: “Why was I elated at that pain in his brow, my breasts inches below his lowered mouth, untouched, washed out under the white lights? Simply the knowledge of that look fed me; I would have stood there in Nathan’s silence all afternoon, staring past my nipples to his glistening black shoes.”
Little Rabbit
I loved this novel. Like Acts of Service, it delves into the psychology of discovering your own submission as a queer woman with a dominant man. For much of the book, you are not sure if the power dynamic depicted is in some way problematic or unhealthy. And time and again, we are surprised and made to challenge our assumptions. As a bisexual woman, I really appreciated this depiction of another queer woman grappling with what it means to be submissive to a cis man. This novel is hard to put down, sexy, and not in any way junk food. Like most of the books on this list, you feel both smarter and turned on reading it.
Quote: “I want you to have what you want,” he said, looking at me. And I wanted him then, a wave that spread across my limbs, unsettling the structures deep inside me. My wrist still tingled, and I liked it. I wanted to crawl to him, sit at his feet and surrender. Let him do what he wanted to me. Fright quickly followed. I’d never felt the wish to give myself up in such a way. You don’t want that, I told myself, staying on the bed.”
A Very Nice Girl
I’m surprised more people don’t know about this recent novel. It’s smart, sexy, and attuned to power dynamics in age-gap, nuanced-yet-toxic relationships. I really enjoyed this read and found myself relating to a lot of the feelings in it. I also learned about opera from reading it, which was nice.
Quote: “I tried to think of the right words. I could say — he’s a warm sort of person, it’s like being under a spotlight, when he looks at me, and everything I say matters, is heard, is important — or I could say — he’s cold and cool, when I’m with him I’m fixed into place, calm, and I just have to stay there, and everything’s good. But neither would be right, not exactly. I couldn’t fix an image of him in my mind. He was blurry round the edges. I only knew how he made me feel — like my life had been very small and narrow and I hadn’t even known it. Like I’d been walking round and round and round in a room with blank walls and I’d thought that was everything, but he’d opened the door for me and outside, outside there was — He’s nice — I said.”
Acts of Desperation
Considering how much people love Sally Rooney (no shade, I do too — see below), I’m kind of confused that this novel hasn’t made an even bigger splash. Perhaps it’s because it’s a little darker than Rooney tends to go. Though this novel deals in the same themes — power dynamics and romantic infatuation, with Dublin as a backdrop — it takes things to a more dysfunctional place. If you’ve ever been in love with someone who you know is bad for you — and not just because they love you back far less — this book is extremely relatable and biting.
Quote: “Mediating your own victimhood is just part of being a woman. Using it or denying it, hating it or loving it, and all of these at once. Being a victim is boring for everyone involved. It is boring for me to present myself through experiences which are instrumentalised constantly as narrative devices in soap operas and tabloids. Is this why I am so ashamed of talking about certain events, or of finding them interesting? This is part of the horror of being hurt generically. Your experiences are so common that they become impossible to speak about in an interesting way.”
Beautiful World, Where Are You?
While all of Rooney’s books could be on this list, her newest novel makes the cut for depicting two different power dynamics: One is a sweet and nuanced Daddy-girl relationship. The other involves two characters locked in a complex power struggle that explores class and gender in interesting ways. I also enjoyed the depiction of a flawed and sexy bisexual man, something we don’t see often enough.
Quote: “It makes me feel very safe and relaxed. Like when I’m complaining to you about something and you call me ‘princess’, that turns me on a little bit. Do you hate me saying that? It just makes me feel like you’re in control of everything, and you won’t let anything bad happen to me.”
Buy Beautiful World, Where Are You
My Dark Vanessa
My editor Donna Loffredo recommended this book as I was in the midst of writing my memoir Open, and it had a big impact on me. It gave me permission to lean into telling the full truth of both the eroticism and dysfunctionality of a relationship with an unhealthy power dynamic. The relationship is also filled with emotional abuse and gaslighting. It shows the slow progression of that situation artfully, and how tangled up with desire it can get. I related to so much in this book.
I’ve heard some critiques of this novel saying “should a book about an abusive relationship be…sexy?” I think that depicting what can be sexy about unhealthy power dynamics actually does the readers trapped in said dynamics more of a service than simply creating narratives where it’s “all bad.” That’s not the reality of most abusive relationships; there’s a reason people get embedded in them, and it’s far more complex than simply the abuser having all the power.
Quote: “It’s important that you never feel coerced. That’s the only way I’ll be able to live with myself.” “I don’t feel coerced.” “You don’t? Truly?” I shake my head. “Good. That’s good.” He reaches for my hands. “You’re in charge here, Vanessa. You decide what we do.””
Luster
Falling squarely in the category of “wise novels about artistic and floundering Millenials,” Luster is a wry and cutting read. It explores power dynamics of race, age, class, and even couple privilege in non-monogamous dynamics. Our protagonist is also in a relationship with (you guessed it!) an older man — but as the story continues, we watch her coming into her own power in subtle and complex ways. The central power struggle is really more with her metamour, the man’s wife. It was refreshing to see a complex depiction of that dynamic in literature.
Quote: “This was the contradiction that would define me for years, my attempt to secure undiluted solitude and my swift betrayal of this effort once in the spotlight of an interested man.”
Open
Yes, I’m recommending my own book! It very much fits on this list. I also want to spread the word that despite being marketed as “about non-monogamy,” my reported memoir is actually just as much about power dynamics, bisexuality, and the slow progression of emotional abuse and gaslighting. Actually, I’ll just quote author Ilana Masad’s excellent explanation from her NPR review of Open:
Open is about non-monogamy, of course, it’s neither a manifesto of polyamorous ideals nor an argument against it. Instead, more than anything else, it’s Krantz’s sincere and curious reckoning with the cultural messaging we all receive about gendered expectations and power dynamics in romantic and sexual relationships in general. How do we untangle those from our own desires? How do we differentiate between those desires and the things we think we should want, or that our partners want us to want? The highs and lows of a first non-monogamous relationship prove the perfect canvas on which to explore these fundamental questions.
Quote: “A private feeling, this increasingly skillful dissociation. I was tiny, nearly invisible. In the arms of these men who thought they held me, I was actually evaporating. Right before their eyes, and they couldn’t even see it. My quiet. My secret.”
I’m always looking for further recommendations, so please let me know in the comments if you have any favorite books that belong on this list.
Happy reading, and don’t forget to support authors by doing things like buying their books, requesting them from your local library, reviewing them on Amazon and Goodreads, sharing their books on social media, and sending encouraging notes. Readers keep us going, and every little bit helps!
