Suzanne Portnoy

For all those who think that ‘open relationships’ are as likely to work as peanut butter and pastrami or that they’re just an excuse for two people to screw around, Jenny Block’s new book ‘Open‘ is a revelation. In it Jenny, a professional mother living on the outskirts of Dallas, charts her journey from being the girl-next-door (albeit with bi tendencies) to meeting her Prince Charming, only to discover after a few years that the sex had become pretty monotonous and frankly, a little boring. Although that scenario will be familiar to a large proportion of men and women who have been in long-term relationships, her way of resolving her dissatisfaction was anything but typical. Rather than cheat, Jenny went for the much braver option of sitting her husband down and having a heart to heart about the way she was feeling.

What followed that difficult conversation was the joint decision that they open up their marriage. Jenny (and her partner) tried everything from sharing lovers to one night stands to having relationships with others until eventually Jenny fell in love with a woman and her husband decided that he preferred being monogamous to polyamorous. Still very much together, the book makes many valid and powerful points about the nature of monogamy, the challenges and value in being polyamorous and about love and relationships in the 21st century. Jenny writes in a straightforward, easy to read style that kept my attention from start to finish. There is so much good old-fashioned common sense in ‘Open,’ it should be required reading for anyone in a relationship.

It has been a long time that I read a book that I wish I’d written myself but in many ways I see myself as similar to Jenny in that we’re both trying to challenge people’s conception of love and life in the 21st century - Jenny within the confines of a committed relationship and me as an older, single woman. I’ve always tried to sprinkle a few words of wisdom in amongst the horny sex scenes I write but I know that often they get overlooked. Jenny and I have exchanged quite a few emails and she’s extremely warm and likeable, not some New Age type person but an attractive, intelligent woman who has thought long and hard about what makes her happy and decided to live by her own rules. Hopefully she will soon get a UK deal for the paperback version but in the meantime it is worth buying the hardback.