THIS IS FKING PHENOMENAL!!!!!!

I haven't gotten my head around this enough to write my full review yet, but in the meantime... holy crap is this great.
It's so so so much more than just a look at Febos' time spent celibate and why, it's a look at why/how/when/where women are put into this tiny tiny box we're supposed to fit in. No matter how spacially impossible the box is to fit inside, no matter how biologically impossible. Regardless of whether it's conducive to a successful life.

I can't recommed this enough—it <i>surpassed</i> my expectations. I've read all but 1 of Febos' other books, so that says a lot.

BACK W REVIEW POSTED TO IG:
𝙷𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚢 𝙷𝚘𝚞𝚛: 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚊 𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜.
Sex is ✨exciting✨ I assumed celibacy would be…much less exciting.
Turns out not picking up 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙧𝙮 𝙎𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙤𝙣 𝘣𝘺 @melissafebos —for any reason—is doing yourself a gross disservice.

I went in expecting the kinda memoir that’s specifically the author’s. Relatable if you stretch a bit, adapt their story to your situation. Fortune cookie & horoscope-esque. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙧𝙮 𝙎𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙤𝙣 is a MF manifesto. W/e you’ve read of Febos’, imagine that on steroids (or off? depending on what kinda roids they are ig 😅😂). By the end I was convinced enough to consider celibacy myself.

In removing the “end goal” so to speak, you gain clarity inaccessible any other way (or so I’m told lol). The observations made regarding women’s presentation & their consequential treatment? Staggering. The separation of 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵 from its other parts (after care, emotional cleanup, self perception, etc)? Something I’d argue only Melissa could articulate in this way. A v unique spot, some of which I can personally attest to, being a queer femme is so frustrating in terms of visibility. A toss up whether your queerness will be recognized—& even when it is, that doesn’t shield from the male gaze.

Really looking at her relationship w her body & sex left me no choice but to do the same. 𝘐 𝘴𝘰𝘣𝘣𝘦𝘥. It’s SO sad how much time, money, emotional bandwidth & mental energy I’ve (we’ve) spent in hopes of ultimately—like it or not—being desirable. & for what? The vast majority of those whose attention I was hoping to catch I couldn’t pick out of a line-up today. There’s not a single relationship that was made better by the dynamic, if anything I set myself up for disappointment & mistreatment.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙧𝙮 𝙎𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙤𝙣 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦-𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘸 𝘴𝘦𝘹, 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺’𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘸 𝘴𝘦𝘹, 𝘰𝘳 𝘸 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦… 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘩𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 🥴
𝐀 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐦𝐦𝐞 & 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠.

this book is a deeply reflective, fiercely intelligent exploration of celibacy, desire, and the work of changing your life. melissa febos writes with the same blistering clarity and self-inquiry that made girlhood so powerful, but here she turns her gaze inward with even more precision. after ending a long relationship - one that she admits she ended badly, cheating on a partner she had just nursed through major medical care - she decides to spend a year celibate. what begins as penance becomes something richer, stranger, and ultimately transformative.

this book is less about abstinence and more about attention. without the distractions of romance, febos begins to see her own patterns more clearly: her history of limerence, her hunger for validation through love, her tendency to contort herself for people who give very little in return. she reflects on her heroin addiction and the subsequent love addiction that followed. it's through naming these compulsions - desire without discernment, intimacy without reciprocity - that she begins to unlearn them.

there's a compelling tension between past and present selves throughout the book. she writes about her friend, a woman trapped in a toxic relationship with a verbally abusive partner. the friend gives away her cat, bends herself into smaller and smaller shapes to try to make a bad relationship work. febos watches with painful recognition, calling what her friend is in "the maelstrom," and seeing echoes of the person she used to be. it's in these moments that friendship becomes mirror and lifeline. this is when the book is at its most moving.

another example is her relationship with ray, a much younger friend with whom she shares real chemistry. the connection is mutual, but febos makes the choice not to pursue it. instead, she nurtures a friendship instead. the restraint is not about repression but about clarity and knowing the difference between what we want in a moment and what we actually need.

febos also makes the case that as we age, romance often recedes, and friendship takes its rightful place at the center of our emotional lives. she writes about learning to say no to drunk people, to unpleasurable sex, to anything that doesn't feel right. and in saying no, she begins to build a self she can finally live inside.

her past as a sex worker, specifically a dominatrix, becomes part of this story too - not in a sensational way, but as a meaningful part in how she learned to control her labor and later found purpose in teaching without commodifying her body. she draws inspiration from historical figures like hildegard von bingen, virginia woolf, and sappho. women who chose solitude to center their art and spirituality.

this isn't a book about giving things up. it's about making room. this book insists that there is a life beyond compulsion, and that if we're willing to examine our desires and trace our patterns, we can begin to make different choices. it's about facing yourself fully and finding that you are enough.

“I had been thinking of this time as a dry season, but it had been the most fertile of my life since childhood. I had run dry when I spent that vitality in worship of lovers. In celibacy, I felt more vital, fecund, wet, than I had in years.”

A reflective memoir about a year of celibacy, self-discovery, and exploring love in all its forms—divine, romantic, physical, platonic, creative, and self-directed. Melissa Febos compares notes on celibacy and solitude with those of Hildegard von Bingen, Virginia Woolf, Sappho, and Wile E. Coyote (lol yes).

I highlighted so many passages and know I’ll be revisiting parts of this again. If you enjoy feminist nonfiction or memoir-style essays, I definitely recommend picking this one up.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the advance copy!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this PHENOMENAL book. I am a huge, massive, Febos fan and I think this is her best yet. My partner recently asked me who should read this book and I said, "everyone." It's funny and incisive and relatable and full of interesting information. The best book of the year, easily.

A definite mixed bag of things but such an interesting reflection from one of the most important memoirists of our time.

Melissa Febos is one of the greatest living memoirist, and very likely the most important. Ever single one of her books is lacerating, vicious, beautiful, and important. No exception here.

i was looking forward to this memoir as i really enjoyed body work, febos’s guide to writing memoir. while i didn’t enjoy the dry season quite as much, i think there are some interesting lessons to be taken from it. the book reflects on her period of celibacy, where she reflected on the non-stop chain of relationships she was in up until her mid-thirties.

i got a lot out of her reflections on using this period as a time to truly find herself and focus on the other important things in her life such as friendship, writing, and spirituality. also loved the literary references she made, especially audre lorde’s uses of the erotic, which had a great impact on me when i read it at the end of 2024. febos mentions a lot of writers and historical figures that would be interesting to research further.

i think reactions to her musings on sex and love and relationships will greatly depend on the readers’ own experiences with those things. some of those sections fell a bit flat for me compared to the parts focusing on her internal changes and confidence as her independence grew. some of the timelines of her relationships and those of her friends that are going through similar situations also felt a bit jumbled at times. 3.5 stars rounded up

This is the first Melissa Febos book I've fully read (I DNF'd Girlhood) and I think it's just not for me. I liked the parts where she talked about the historical figures or other writers/thinkers she was pondering during her time being celibate, but the overall project of the book was just not something with which I wanted to engage. If you are interested to hear more I will tell you in person lol. Obviously still well-written and interesting, but I just didn't *like* it.

This was really a master class in being intentional with your priorities and reflecting on what actually makes you feel good. Febos's ability for self-reflection and finding meaning in her experiences is unmatched, and her writing is witty and enjoyable.

I wanted this book to be more of a narrative of everyday pleasure - like “The Art of Frugal Hedonism” or Katherine May’s “Enchantment” - and an exploration of a what a woman’s life becomes outside of the sexual roles of the patriarchy… but it wasn’t that. Instead, it was an arduous academic monologue of the author examining her own obsessive behaviors in the context of sex and codependency, as well as sporadic accounts of historical celibates (which, admittedly, were often women who disavowed sex to escape the confines of patriarchy) that often felt jarring. In fact, I don’t think there was much genuine pleasure (asexual or otherwise) until the last 50 pages of the book. There were some enlightened gems in that last chunk (mostly in “Part III”) that earned it two stars for me instead of one, but not enough to redeem the whole slog. It’s a memoir and I found myself repeatedly rolling my eyes at the narrator/MC because of the drama she imbues on some common experiences. She clearly underwent tremendous personal growth in this life period as she details is, and I infer that writing it was cathartic for her, but the book felt like jamming a therapeutic diary and a bunch of academic essays together in a fairly disjointed manner, and the product was not particularly compelling to me, aside from that last chunk mentioned above.

Recommend hesitantly for fans of: highly intellectual/erudite prose, “Care and Feeding”, “Eat, Pray, #FML”…

I was surprised by this one, but all in good ways. Febos delivered the beautiful, thoughtful, piercing prose fans like me have come to expect, and I would dare anyone not to be moved by the vulnerability on these pages. There was much more "religion" or "the divine" or "infinity symbol" (as she refers to it) in this book than I anticipated, though! At first I was unsure about whether I liked this or not, but by the end I understood what point Febos is making. This is a profoundly thought-provoking, transformative book that has me looking at my own life differently.

While I enjoyed the memoir aspect of this book more than the nonfictional additions by the author, overall, this was not the book for me. That's on me...I should have known given the title, but I have tried other books outside my comfort zone (the first that comes to mind is More by Molly Roden Winter) that worked.

Though I am a huge fan of Febos's work, I was initially skeptical about this one; just like many of the criticisms pointed out by the author herself, I found myself thinking, "Oh, poor thing! No sex for a WHOLE year!" and dismissing the endeavor as an experiment that only a very lucky and attractive person would be able to attempt.

The deeper I read into The Dry Season, though, the more I realized that my initial dismissal was a result of my own fear and deep awkwardness around the subjects of pleasure and intimacy. Febos is a masterful author of the body, and her work here is no less thorough and evocative than in previous titles like Body Work and Girlhood.

I know that it feels like all white women of a certain age are talking about Miranda July's All Fours--and I am a white woman of a certain age--but I think the shockwave that the book has sent through a specific chunk of the reading public is due, in part, to its extreme honesty regarding desire at an age when women are societally expected to have none. Regardless of its merit as literature, All Fours has opened a seam in which many women are finding themselves communicating with one another about subjects so thoroughly obscured as to be imperceptible.

The Dry Season continues that conversation, as the author looks back on past relationships, sexual entanglements, and persistent, random attractions, trying to pinpoint the locus of her own sexual desires within the common mishaps of having-sex-while-female. Is she attracted to someone because they are attracted to her, or despite it? Does being partnered interfere with personal autonomy? Is the desire for sex and intimacy just another high to which one can become hopelessly addicted?

Throughout this, Febos bolsters the narrative with insightful research into various concepts of celibacy--both religious and secular--which I found fascinating. In particular, she rigorously investigates the "soft power" so frequently attributed to those considered desirable. I found myself regularly highlighting passages and noting sections that I would like to contemplate further. Overall a lovely read.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Melissa's writing remains invigorating to me, even though I so often take my time with her books. I've seen a few mentions or even critiques that Febos does not delve into the political so much, but frankly I disagree. In my opinion, much of her memoirs live well within these political structures and societal values, but are much less interested in the theories that explain them so much as they are deeply invested in how to live within them. Or in this book's case how to divest from them, and what that means for yourself and your life in the long run. It is not a perspective I am completely used to, so it is one I am greatly interested in. While I don't think I've read enough Butler to be qualified to say this, this is an aspect that reminds me of her writing as well. Both utilize the political as a catalyst for the personal and erotic, though with obviously differing intentions.

Now having completed the book, I can see the way it builds continuously upon her previous work. If you're just starting out with Febos's work, I would never argue against starting wherever you wanted in her bibliography, but I think your understanding and connection with this book is heightened if you've read her other work (especially abandon me, and perhaps girlhood, in shades). I can understand why this book's subject, finding sensuality in celibacy may seem to some as trite, cliched, or even anti-sex, but I don't think it is at all. Celibacy is her route of discovery in this book, but it is the discovery that resonates throughout. Part I is perhaps the most scattered in terms of ideas and topics. There is no sugar coating, but frequent self denial and human ignorance. You make sense of the book as the book begins to make sense of itself, with the payoffs in Parts II and III being well worth the journey.

Febos moves through the story of ancient female mystics, erotic obsessed authors, feminist activists and more as she tries to make sense of the her underlying instincts, and the patterns of her life. This is a hard book to sum up in my own words, so I'll use hers: "I am doing the same thing here: building a linear narrative, grafting other stories onto it, folding time to see the patterns. If I suggest a single meaning it will be a lie."

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book is a triumph in a way that builds upon the legacy of Febos’ other works. It is so thoughtful, well researched, and meandering in a way that felt beautiful. She took a concept that she admits herself isn’t super universal and then wrote a book that felt truly universal in its descriptions of the search for meaning and love that sit at the heart of most all of humanity.

It was truly a gift to read. It is academic and spiritual and accessible and funny. It is the type of book you will want to annotate. The type of book you will want to savor. The type of book that reminds you that maybe figuring out who you are and what you want in in fact worth your time and energy.

I’m not even sure I have the talent or ability to review writing as good as this! My therapist asked what I liked about the book and I was like “…..” I mean she described ____ as _____ (I’m not allowed to quote per Net Galley) but who would think to write like this?! It’s stunning. It takes your breath away. It makes you want to go audit an MFA.

My only qualm with this book is that the title felt a little misleading for what it was primarily about. Febos tells a story of healing, growth, connection to elders and research on celibacy, and finding herself. There were glimmers of pleasure in that, but I hadn’t expected so much of it to be about past relationships. I always feel a little icky providing something I didn’t like about a memoir, because the story is true because it was her experience. That’s the whole point. It was still a gorgeous read and made me self-reflect more than I usually sign up for in a book, so brava on getting a reader to get vulnerable! This was a book about the relationship between self worth and lovability and BOY did I need someone else’s story to ground myself in that. Plus the ending was sweet as ever.

Can’t wait for this book to come out and thank you Net Galley and Knopf Publishing for the ARC!

This book was interesting but lacked gumption, Also this book didn’t need to be as long and detailed as it did. The author is a talented writer but sometimes the tone felt off and clumsy. Parts of it felt braggy and self-indulgent. The topic made for an intriguing premise but near the conclusion I just felt frustrated.

Can you hear that? It’s the “New Melissa Febos!!!” alarm! It’s ringing so loud! You’re running to your local library to get a copy of The Dry Season so you can read about Febos’ year of celibacy and all the things that year taught her about herself! Hurry! You don’t want to miss this delicious memoir of sensuality and desire! It’s juicy and thoughtful and lovely! The alarm is sounding!

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who's read Melissa Febos previous works, but she has knocked it out of the park once again with The Dry Season. This book was incredibly reflective, well-researched, humorous, and brings a needed perspective on celibacy, dating, and spirituality.

The book follows Febos on her initial three-month (soon extended to a year-long) vow of celibacy after a particularly destructive relationship. Throughout the novel, Febos guides us through her past "inventory" of failed relationships while including research and literary analysis of women throughout history, from religious figures to her literary icons. The Dry Season includes many poignant reflections on relationships both good and bad, and finding your "divine purpose" in life.

The amount of self-reflection Febos is able to infuse throughout the novel is truly inspiring, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who, like me, is trying to decenter romantic relationships in their lives. This is the type of novel that I'm certain I'll find myself coming back to in moments of uncertainty or when I need to gain perspective.

The author and I have opposite life experiences. I’ve never been in a relationship, never been in love, rarely have crushes, and momentarily I’m not dating because I’m focusing on my career. I am also demisexual and demiromantic. I’ve never struggled with the topics the author described, so the book was a little hard for me to get through because its relatability was missing. However, just because the book was not written for me, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an audience. I’m sure plenty of people will enjoy this story and find it insightful.