Once you get past the inspiring audacity of writing a book about the pursuit of female ejaculate (yeah, that’s the precious substance of the title)…oh, wait, no, you’re never going to get past that. You can’t. It’s too awesome, too out there.
But then, of course, this book is also about so much more. Love and murder and magic. There, a perfect combination. That’ll attract me to a book every time, even when it isn’t a book by the author of one of the best possession stories out there and if you haven’t read Come Closer do yourself a huge favor and grab it right now. It’ll spin your mind like a tumble cycle.
Anyway, back to this one…this is a book about books. I love those. The main protagonist is a woman who once wrote books and is now making a living of selling them, specializing in rare and random. This change wasn’t by choice but by circumstance due to her beloved partner suddenly, inexplicably, and irrevocably turning into a vegetable. Vegetative states cost lots of money and take lots of care. Once Lily was 50% of the perfect literati couple in love, now she is a ghost of her former self.
This ghost comes alive, though, when she hears about a very special book of sex magic that a client is willing to pay millions for. Suddenly, Lily sees her way out of her situation, and she pursues it with gusto. Teaming up with a friend of a strong romantic inclinations, she begins to hop from country to country from one eccentric moneyed weirdo to the next, looking for this book.
So, that’s fun in and of. Itself, but there’s so much more here. Not only is it gorgeously written, not only is it so very smart, but it surprises you too. The ending was just about perfect. Just when I was thinking maybe this is too much sex and indulgence and pursuit of purely somatic pleasures to read about, that ending came along and elevated the entire production to the top and through the roof. Turns out it was a murder mystery novel too. Awesome. Turns out it was a morality lesson too. Awesome once again.
Lily’s transformation is a stunner and that last chapter is a moral fable at its finest, a perfect cautionary tale of the dangers of getting what one wants the most, a perfect meditation of the mutuality of love.
So yeah, wow, what a book. Loved it. A stunning literary thriller. A magical book about magic. Take your pick…but do pick it up. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

This book is fantastic and super sexy! I love Gran's prose and will be recommending this to lots of friends.

Come Closer is one of my all time favourite horror stories so naturally I had to check out the author's newest release. This is more of an erotica thriller rather than a traditional horror novel. I enjoyed the steamy bits, but unfortunately I did not connect with the main plot.

Did anyone ever watch The Ninth Gate with Johnny Deep? I did. This book is a bit gender bent sexy/thriller realistic version of that. I enjoyed it. It is a tad just a tad slow 20% in it picks up. 4/5 stars.

I love books about books so I went in line for obvious reasons. I mean that title is so intriguing even if you haven't read the blurb. So I had no idea what I would be getting into when I started this book but am I glad I requested this one.

Lily Albrecht, seemed all set for success and happiness; she wrote an acclaimed novel at a young age and marrying her soulmate would have been the perfect way to live the rest of her life. However, fate had a different plan for her. Circumstances reduced her to the struggle of supporting herself by dealing with rare books and the lonely burden of being a caretaker to her husband, Abel, now a husk of a man, ravaged by a mental disease, who can give her neither physical, emotional, or intellectual stimulation.

At an Antiquarian Book Fair she's offered the opportunity to track down a copy of a mysterious black-magic book and is offered a lot of money for it Lily jumps at the opportunity. Money after all would solve a lot of her problems and save her from an almost hand to mouth existence.

And therein begins a roller coaster of a journey to seek this book. Lucas Markson, a rare books archivist and librarian joins her in this globe-trotting search when ends up being a sexual awakening journey involving meeting multiple people who have designated sex-rooms in their homes all in the search for a book that apparently is stiffly coated with layers of a few centuries' worth of human sexual fluids.

This is an erotic thriller which is well paced and keeps you entertained right until the end.

This is not what I was expecting from this book. I don't read erotica but this book was great. I loved it and definitely recommend it.

Thanks to the Netgalley and the publishers for sending me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Dreamland books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of The Book of the Most Precious Substances.

I have an odd love for the movie The Ninth Gate so just hearing the premise for The Book of the Most Precious Substance instantly got me excited. I mean the search for a rare magical book? Yeah, go ahead and sign me up now! Naturally this book and that movie are quite different, but they both feature cool, complex, and mysterious storylines and are loaded with unique ‘bookish’ casts of characters, exploring just how far people will go to get what they want. I can’t claim to have read many erotic thrillers and while this is the first book I’ve read by Sara Gran, I’ll definitely be checking out her back catalog.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-book-of-the-most-precious-substance-sara-gran/1140153659?ean=9780578947099&bvnotificationId=3767a4e0-9279-11ec-9ef8-0a63d362df8b&bvmessageType=REVIEW_APPROVED&bvrecipientDomain=gmail.com#review/201762916

"Magic works, but it's an exercise in irony, sometimes a dangerous one. Be careful."

Sometimes a book haunts you so much that you can't stop thinking about it. Even long after you've finished reading it, the story invades your thoughts, instantly taking you back to what you experienced as you read it. Such was the case with Sara Gran's story of a woman slowly succumbing to demonic possession, Come Closer. I devoured that book right before Halloween last year, and I've been thinking about it ever since. It should come as no surprise then that I eagerly accepted a copy of her latest novel The Book of the Most Precious Substance to review.

Lily Albrecht used to have it all. On the professional front, a fairly successful novel brought her modest sales and acclaim amongst the literary community. On the personal front, she met the love of her life, a fellow author, and was living out her dreams. But all of this wasn't to last. She struggled to write a follow-up novel. Then her husband began to forget things. It wasn't long before everything she loved about her life was gone. She was no longer a working author. Instead, she spent her days caring for the shell of what had become of her husband, resigned to the fact that this was now her life.

In a last-ditch attempt to support herself financially while still staying in the book world, Lily turned to collecting and selling rare books. It makes for a modest living at best, but there are sometimes opportunities for a real windfall. A fellow bookseller comes around asking for help finding a rare work that Lily's never heard of, The Book of the Most Precious Substance. It promises to be the biggest sale she's ever had, but there's one problem. No one seems to know exactly what the book is or where to find it. Determined to procure and sell the book, Lily sets out on a hunt that will prove to be as difficult as it is dangerous.

I hadn't read a summary of The Book of the Most Precious Substance before diving in, so I wasn't prepared for the erotic thriller that followed. You see, the titular book in question promises unlimited power through the completion of five acts of sexual pleasure. I won't lie to you. When the true nature of the titular book in question was first revealed, I had to stop reading. I wasn't sure this was the kind of story that I was willing to consume. It is to Sara Gran's credit though, that the main character Lily and the mystery behind hunting for a rare book had so ensnared my curiosity that I couldn't help but to continue reading. While the book never gets too graphic in describing the sensual acts that propel this fictional magic, I don't think that reading about them will be for everyone. Still, those willing to suspend disbelief and stick along for the short duration of the book will find it to be an entertaining and twisty thriller that more than satisfies.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this title. Though I generally knew the premise of this book, I wasn't expecting it to be so explicit. Thankfully it wasn't completely heteronormative, but I definitely skimmed some of those scenes. That said, it was a quick and very compelling story that was told well. Any fans of book world fiction will appreciate it!

What you are reading in the mainstream press about this book is correct. It's great. You do want to read it.

Lily Albrecht is a novelist turned rare bookseller who’s down on her luck and in need of cash, so when she hears of an elusive manuscript that promises unrivaled pleasure and power, she can’t pass the opportunity up. She teams up with an archivist to try and track it down. However, magic can have unintended consequences and there are those who would do anything to get their hands on the book.

The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran by is a delightfully bizarre occult thriller about sex magic.

The premise sounded incredible and I wanted to love this book so badly, but I ended up feeling really torn.

The positives? Gran has an innate knack for making keen observations about people and for crafting well-fleshed out characters.

However, the dialogue in the first half of the novel comes off as amateurish and is filled with far too many interjectives and filler words--like the characters say wow more than Owen Wilson. There's this weird disconnect between the dialogue and the more sophisticated writing in the first-person narration. It's like they came from two different books, and it really threw me off.

(Granted, I did receive an early copy, so hopefully the dialogue is more consistently polished in the official book.)

Overall, The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an imperfect but seductive book that’ll appease fans of Brand New Cherry Flavor.

I’ve been looking forward to this title since I heard about it last year. This book points out, more than once, that book people like nothing more than books about other books. It’s so true! We do love books about books. Me? Well, there’s nothing I quite love more than books about books that deal in the occult, mysticism, witchcraft, magic, etc. That way I get to combine my love for books about books with my love of books about the occult. Talk about killing two birds with one stone, right?

This book intrigued me because I knew it was going to be a book that dripped with both eroticism and horror, two things I love combined together in literature. Whether it be Clive Barker, Anne Rice, Lee Mandelo (who wrote 2021’s fabulous southern gothic horror novel with queer themes, “Summer Sons”), or the plethora of independently-published authors who work in the erotica genre and blend all levels of dark and depraved with all levels of romance every day, I love it all and endeavor to read as much of it as I can, because humans and sexuality intrigues me. It always has. Sex, horror, and all the myriad ways we can combine those two things in writing is simply one of the most fascinating aspects to me about literature. It always has and likely always will be.

This novel was both exactly what I thought it would be in some aspects and not anything what I thought it would be in others. I didn’t expect the first-person POV, memoir-esque storytelling aspect of it. This narrative device doesn’t work in a lot of novels it’s used in; here, though, it works wonderfully, because you can tell this is a story a storyteller needs to tell. It can’t simply be narrated by an omniscient narrator. The tale is personal, so it needs to be told personally. Gran made the right choice in deciding to let our protagonist, Lily Albrecht, narrate the story as if she were dictating a memoir of the steps that led to her search for the titular book. I did expect the ending and moral of the story, if only because a lot of stories that are about power and a search for MacGuffins end with the same moral. Luckily, that didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story because it was just so enjoyable and compelling to read!

This would’ve been a five star read if I hadn’t felt as if, several times, like this book could’ve just been a little more this, a little more that, or just a little more everything. Gran writes beautiful prose, there’s no doubt, but I felt as if sometimes there needed to be a greater punishment for a reward, or some stakes needed to be higher, or some risks needed to be greater. There was always just a feeling of needing just a little bit more of something. But the book itself is so lovely and such an intriguing, page-turning read with compelling characters and an interesting plot that I have no doubt if you give it a chance you’ll fall into this book and love it too.

Was happy to include this novel in February’s Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction. (In Zoomer magazine’s Zed Book Club section.)

Sometimes you read one of your favorites of the year in January. As with author Sara Gran’s delightfully unhinged predecessor Come Closer, I devoured this new novel in one sitting. Set against the backdrop of the rare book world, its protagonist is a dealer searching for a 17th-century erotic grimoire (HELL yes) that’s rumored to be one of the most powerful occult books ever written. As she follows mysterious leads from LA to Paris, she becomes entangled in the tome’s spell—it’s a thrilling, sexy, grimy, haunting, achingly human story that I know I’ll remember almost every beat of come December, and beyond.

This book just wasn't for me.

And not because of the sex, I love reading erotic thrillers and books with some spicy scenes, but to me this was the most unsexy erotic book I've ever read.

I was also completely put off by the writing. I've never read any of Sara Gran's other books so I'm hoping this was an anomaly but the writing seemed so juvenile, it felt like I was reading a high school student's beginner creative writing work.

I had to DNF this book at 65%. I tried so hard to push through to the end but I was just dreading having to pick it up to read and finally told myself it was okay to let it go.

What a reading experience this was! The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an interesting concept and I think Sara Gran did a good job with it.

Lily is a book dealer of rare books. She comes in contact with someone who is looking for a rare book called The Book of the Most Precious Substance. And the story takes off from there, an adventure tracking down this rare book. I liked Lily as a character and enjoyed the portions in the beginning with Abel. I did think the portions with Lily and Lucas were kind of boring for the first 60%. There was just something about his character that was blah, It seemed to be the same events whenever they were with each other (food, sex, talking to people) just in a different location. The Book of the Most Precious Substance was a quick and easy read with a solid ending.

I realize after finishing this, some people had marked this as horror and also mystery. I did not feel that it was dark enough to be either. There was a lot of sex and sex magic but not horror. (Horror is of course subjective, everyone's horror is different)

I'm a big Sara Gran fan and especially love the Claire DeWitt books, so I was very excited to get to read this. It was fun to read and I liked a lot of things about it, but I felt like the ending was rushed and then just cuts off abruptly. I also think if you're going to use "abracadabra" seriously, you need to insert a little context for the actual origin and meaning of the word, because it's become such a joke that it just felt like a shockingly silly placeholder word when it came up three separate times. I liked Lily as a character and I found her easy to like and empathize with even when she makes bad decisions. Overall I liked it but hope the final copy feels more finished.

The Book of the Precious Substance is "the rarest, most sought after book in the entire bibliography of the occult." "I never worked with other dealers. I never went chasing after ridiculous books. I never counted money before it was in hand...It was like the book already had me, and was leading me exactly where it wanted."

Published author Lily Albrecht was married to the love of her life, Abel. He had been "a highly renowned writer of academic theory, criticism and obscure histories..."."Once life had been fun and adventurous and full of surprises". A tragic diagnosis ensued. Now Abel was cared for by a Nigerian male nurse named Awe in a small house in upstate New York. Lily was forced to sell off many books to meet the cost of Abel's care. She reinvented herself as a rare book seller.

At an Antiquarian Book Fair, Lily was approached about partnering up to search for The Book of the Precious Substance. A potential buyer was willing to pay upward of six figures for an authenticated copy. "A million dollars and maybe, more enticing, something to do...Just a lonely woman...grabbing at something bright and colorful as it floated by."

Lucas Markson, a rare books archivist and librarian, "had charm unusual in book people...unexpected warmth...despite occasional awkwardness." The hunt for the book would take the duo from New York, to New Orleans, Munich and Paris.

The Book of the Precious Substance was written in 1620. One of three copies, each hand-written in Latin, if still in existence, needed to be found and authenticated before a sale could be completed. The rare occult text on sex magic promised unbridled power upon completion of five steps described within. Black magic would lead to ultimate sexual pleasure. Only the world's wealthiest could afford to pay the big bucks required for this acquisition. "Suddenly, it all seemed silly...a lost book...a dead bookseller, Lucas and his fake smiles and hidden awkwardness...". But, the book had a way of not being captured. Strange things would start to happen in their quest.

"The Book of the Precious Substance" is an erotic thriller written by Sara Gran who continues to amaze with an impressive writing style that propels this novel forward. I admit, however, to not being a fan of erotica. A visit to the world of antiquarian book selling, a window into Lily's life challenges and the life style of eccentrics who practice black magic, make for a fun, unique read with a totally, unexpected ending!

Thank you Dreamland books and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve been a fan of Sara Gran since reading the Claire DeWitt series. Gran’s mysteries are always gritty with strange peculiarities, flawed characters, and a dream-like atmosphere with a touch of horror and fantasy that leaves me feeling a little off-kilter. Gran’s upcoming release The Book of the Most Precious Substance certainly fits that description as well!

Lily Albrecht was a promising novelist traveling the world with a husband she was madly in love with. Now, she’s a rare book dealer trying to earn enough money to care for the shell that is left of her husband’s former self as early onset dementia has ravaged him.

Lily is chasing a lead on The Book of the Most Precious Substance, an alleged 17th century sex magic manual that few have heard about, and even fewer have confirmed its actual existence. Her lead will send her from New York City to New Orleans, Munich, and Paris as she meets with the rich and powerful who have motives to deceive her. Lily will call their bluff, enjoy some mind-blowing sex, and thirst for the book in hopes of earning her a commission that will remove all money concerns ...and possibly even heal her husband.

The book is a slow burn, which I’ve come to expect from this author. It’s dark, gritty, and it has lots of travel and sex. I wanted to love this book but at the end of the day, I just wasn’t invested in it. It’s a book about the search for a book about sex and a lot of sex is had in the quest, which is completely fine, but … I don’t know. It isn’t super erotic or shocking, it’s just sort of… sex peppered with the occult. I appreciated the dimension given to Lily - her feelings and motivations were relatable and it was a solid ending.

Thanks to Dreamland Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is scheduled for release on February 8, 2022.

Lily is an author turned book seller. She didn’t choose to stop writing or to sell off her books leading to her current career path. To survive, she had to.

While setting up her booth, a man approaches her to ask about THE BOOK OF THE MOST PRECIOUS SUBSTANCE. It’s a rare occult text on sex magick. Within its pages are five steps…do you dare take a risk and complete them all?

The search for this book takes Lily on a journey from New York to New Orleans, Munich and finally Paris.

There’s only one reason she wants this book. And she’s determined to stop at nothing to find it.

Things I loved:
🥀 Madam M
🥀All of the occult nuggets thrown in
🥀The fact that they are hunting for a book about sex magick

This book is what I would call an erotic thriller, cause…you know, sex magick. So be warned if that isn’t your thing.

I wanted this book to be a whole lot darker. It’s about the occult, so hello darkness. The pacing was a little off for me too. The first half felt like a slog and the remaining 40% was a wild ride. I would have liked to see the remaining 10% draw out a little bit more. You’ll see what I mean when you read it. It definitely gets twisty towards the end, so buckle up!

3.5 ⭐️

This sounded like something I'd love, but turned out to be very much unlike what I expected. Not to say that it's bad, but the style was not to my taste - too much schlock-horror craziness and not enough literary mystery. Still, it was quite fun to step outside my comfort zone a little!