I bought this quite a while ago because I enjoyed reading Taddeo's articles. She's a great journalist and really brings her subjects to life. In this book, she focuses on three women, and their "relationships". It's essentially three anonymous biographies, emotional and gripping. It was interesting to get a close glimpse of people's secret lives. However, the stories don't have anything to tie them together, there's no common thread, no conclusion to the years Taddeo spent interviewing them.

The common thread that I picked up on (but it's never commented on in any meaningful way) is that these women's lifes and their relationships are controlled by the men in their lives. They even see themselves and their sexuality thorugh this crushing male gaze, and it can be quite uncomfortable to read sometimes. The women all comment on their mental health issues, their warped self-image (all three equate weight loss with beauty), and they have all experienced abuse - I'm not sure why this has been marketed as a book about desire, when it seems to be about trauma.

I appreciate how personal these stories are, but I wish that Taddeo had provided the reader with a more critical voice to frame these stories and to pinpoint some of the wider issues influencing women's personal lives.

I bought this book on a whim, because of the exquisite cover and images, and though I enjoyed it when I started it years ago, it then lay forgotten on a shelf. I'm glad I went back to it - it's an interesting dive into the medicine, spirituality and culture of medieval times. I enjoyed the accessible tone of the book. The author describes people's practices & beliefs, and explains how these practices permeated into different aspects of everyday life, such as diet (certain foods prescribed for certain humours), burial (an entire French dynasty buried their intestines in a holy abbey, to enhance the chance of a peaceful afterlife) and courtly love (with the advent of the heart shape we still use today).

This was a fun read, Gillig has a way of blending romance and fantasy in a way that doesn't detract from either 'genre'. You get the fun longing looks and silly banter with a good dose of exciting plot. And of course Bartholomew is the GOAT.