The Thrill of the Chaste

By Dawn Eden
W Publishing Group
(c) 2006

Dawn Eden had a problem. Like many people, the New York City journalist wanted to get married and start a family of her own. And she thought that the way to do that was the way the secular culture said to do it. By going from bed to bed. The thing was, it was getting her nowhere.

She'd have sex pretty much any time she wanted it and with just about any man she cared to. Some of the men she dated were wrong for her and she knew it deep down but people can talk themselves into anything(or anyone). A relationship might start up from time to time but it would never last.

Finally, Ms. Eden decided to stop lying to herself. The few hours in the sack, breakfast, I'llgiveyaacall approach wasn't working and she knew it. She had also recently become a Christian and wanted to start acting like it. So Dawn Eden did something radical. She decided that the very next man she would have sexual intercourse with would be the man she would spend the rest of her life with and until that man, whoever he was, got there, she wasn't going to have sex at all.

The Thrill of the Chaste is the eminently readable story of how Dawn got to that point and how she stays there. This is as brutally honest a book as you are ever likely to read. But Ms Eden is a wonderful writer, this book's not very long and you can probably polish it off in a day or so. But take your time. There's a lot to think about on these pages.

She's got her detractors of course. These people, for example, have had and continue to have a great deal of fun at Ms. Eden's expense. But that's to be expected. When you toss a smoke bomb into the Playboy Mansion or implicitly suggest that perhaps people like Hugh Hefner and Alfred Kinsey were not heroes at all, people are going to get mad at you.

Is the book heavy on religion? Yes. And that's kind of the point since the theme of this book is that the world's way wasn't working for Dawn Eden. Is the book mainly aimed at younger women? Yes, but men should read it too. In fact, any single person who thinks that relationships can and should be infinitely greater than a Sex in the City episode can find much here to challenge and inspire them.