If you're out of direction...

I got the book "Supersex" by Tracey Cox sent to me by the wonderful people at Tabu Toys recently.

It's a soft cover book with a sexy cover. Just a look at the cover and a flip through the glossy pages had m anxious to see what the book had to offer.

The book starts with instructions on how to touch your partner. It's really basic stuff. For me, I took nothing new away from it. For someone new to exploring sex or just someone shy or inexperienced, it would be great.

Same goes for the next section on teasing your lover. Nicely written but very basic. In the tease section, there's a few pages on Single Sex Vs Couple Sex. That whole thing just annoyed me greatly. I found the ideas in it to be mostly ridiculous in my own opinions. Sure, for a lot of people I'm sure it's true but for me? Ridiculous. Example?

"The downside of couple sex is being stuck in a bad sex cycle. If you're single and have bad sex, you can walk away and try your luck elsewhere. If you're married or in a relationship, you're stuck with it. Even worse, you're forced to do what everyone dreads: work on the relationship. (Ughh!) "

Really? It's dreadful to work on a relationship? In my opinion, the only way to successfully make a long term relationship work is to put effort into it and work on things when they get rough. Be it in the bedroom or any other thing. Relationships take work to make them go. If you dread doing things to better your relationship, maybe you need to re-evaluate things. Just my opinion.

Also, the book talks about how couples have "sensationally soppy spoon sex, sex where you both laugh yourselves stupid and sex where you both stop halfway through, hug fiercely, and say, "God, I love you!" While singles have more variety, more options and aren't stuck with the same things over and over. I don't find that to be true either because I've got three years with my guy under the belt and we still have some amazing, exciting, unique moments. I know we're not the only ones. The idea that couples all fall into having the same boring sex after a certain point to me seems ridiculous.

Then there's the guide on how to strip. I read it and I giggled through out it. If someone stripped for me the way the book instructs, I would laugh because it seems more like a script for a scene in a movie. Or maybe I'm simplistic in the way I dress as I don't go out wearing skirts, heels, garter belts, hose and the whole shebang for a normal day out. Of course if you plan in advance to be doing this strip show later, wearing all of that would make sense. It also seems too cliche and a bit over done though and that for me takes away some of the strip tease appeal.I like something that doesn't look like it was planned down move by move.

Something else that irked me was that as a woman, you ABSOLUTELY HAVE to give a man blowjobs. If you don't he will lose interest and move on to someone who will. Or if you're in a relationship, he'll just get from someone else the blowjob you're not giving him. According to the book. Sounds silly to me. Maybe if you're just dating around and not serious with someone, possibly that works. In a marriage or long term relationship? If that's a deal break then.... *sigh*

The "sure-thing sex positions" displayed in another section of the book look pretty cool though they aren't anything new and spectacular. You need to be in good shape to do most of them though and though they look cool, I'm not sure how good they would be for a prolonged period of time. Worth trying perhaps but I think I'll be passing on most of them. Some look more painful than pleasurable and others look like they'll be more effort to get into than they would be worth, lol.

Something else that annoyed me throughout the book? Seeing things like this. "sennnnnnsational", "Imagine how I felt!!!!!!", "Oooooowwwweeeeee" and stuff like that. I think on a blog, that's cool. I get the author was just trying to sell a point, just how good or bad something was but I don't know. It's not something I expect to see in a published book. I'm possibly just being a bit if a grammar nazi though.

At the start of the book in the introduction, the author states that it would be a good book whether you're heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. I don't find that to be very true. It offers only pictures of a male and a female together. All the tips and scenarios are her pleasing him or him pleasing her. It doesn't offer anything specifically geared to anyone who isn't straight and doesn't cover anything about being the slightest bit curious about your own gender.

Also, there is a whole section that tells you how to analyze if a person is good in bed by paying attention to how they touch you, how the eat and drink and things like that. Seriously? I'm a very polite eater. I enjoy my food but I don't delve into it with crazy abandon. If one were to judge how I am in bed by watching me eat, they would think I was boring in bed mostly and occasionally sensual. I'm not the slightest bit boring so I found that section a bit bogus to say the least. I believe we can learn a lot from body language, daily interactions and from watching people act but I don't think that's applicable to everything.

The writer is a bit witty and shares a few personal stories through out the book. The things she shared tended to be a little amusing but it's always nice (in my opinion) to read about the lighter, amusing side of sex.

I had a difficult time finishing this book. I had to really push myself to finish reading several of the sections and more so I had to stop myself from skimming briefly instead of really reading it. I find a lot of things in the book to be black and white and in my opinion, there are a lot of grey areas to sex, intimacy, relationships, etc. It is informative and there is a ton of information in it. The book details a lot of things and covers a wide variety of topics including teasing, masturbation, oral sex, insecurities with your body, kinks and playing with sex toys. Though it doesn't get too in depth with a lot of subjects, just covers to basics and gets you a good idea of what you need to know. Other sections are very in depth. Despite all the depth and the wide variety of subjects, I still find the book overall to be a little one sided, black and white, whatever you want to call it.

It wasn't all bad though.

The book did have some decent information in it regarding male and female anatomy. It also had some good information about what's going on with your body during sex and explains a more technical sense of what's going on. It also covers some psychological points from male and female prospectives. Though some of the points seem like general assumptions more than anything. Lot of the decent points in the book are pretty much common sense though.

Also there is a section that answers some very popular embarrassing questions about sex, relationships and the body. That was amusing to read but nothing that hasn't really been covered before. The way the author responded to the questions was comical though, in a good way.

I also liked that it had a section covering sex toys and using them with a partner but that isn't a long section and doesn't cover much at all. It would have been better had more information been provided about toys and safety concerns.

There are some good tips here and there through out the book. Simple things though, in my opinion.

The pictures in it, and there are tons, are the most appealing thing about the book. The book has fantastic pictures in it and I found myself often distracted by studying them. Given the trouble I had finishing the book, the distraction wasn't bad.

I did like how everything was broken down in to sections. The structure of the set up is pretty cool. It flows easily from section to section and again, the pictures rock.

Personally, I might thumb through certain sections again but I probably won't touch this book again now that I'm done reading it for this review. I didn't learn anything new from it's 180+ pages though but I've read, explored and experienced a LOT. For someone younger and new to exploring things it would be great. A beginner how to book with lots of artful and stunning pictures. It reads a lot, in my opinion, like a huge compilation of sex and how to articles out of Cosmopolitan magazine. Just with more details and erotic pictures. I give it a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Thanks to Tabu Toys for the book! Oh and if you enjoy reading or participating in online forums, check out the Tabu Forums here!