4.5

This book was going to get five stars from me, not only because of its enormous potential but also the things it actually did cover pretty well. Somewhere in the middle, however, I stumbled upon the chapter about cheating, and it even made me put the book aside for a while, for I couldn't respect it enough. But let us talk from the beginning.
First of all, I strongly recommend "The ethical slut" to everyone, who has ever had, is having or planning to have sex at some point in their lives. Especially to women. I don't know how about you, but I was brought up in the culture of extreme female sexuality shaming. Much later on I discovered feminism, gender roles and sex positivity. This book is one of the very good sources of that. I am convinced that you can benefit from reading it, even if you aren't planning to choose polyamory. Basically everything in there applies to about any relationship ever. Topics of sexual confidence and pleasure, boundaries, consent, jealousy, managing the conflicts and hard feeling etc, - are all very familiar to all of us, regardless how many lovers we choose to have, if any.
Secondly, it's written in a very easygoing and pleasant way. It's like talking to a very good friend, who doesn't judge you and has a lot of life-love-sex-wisdom. The authors are not quite from my generation, and it's indeed noticeable sometimes (for ex. when they mention MySpace and "surfing the web"). But it's somehow very relevant even today, despite those small time-innovation differences.
The Cheating part, however, contradicts everything they'd said in the book and I'm still very confused and frustrated about that. Consent, respect etc. are discussed in the book almost on every page, and yet, when "the relationship might be already open, only one partner doesn't know about it yet" is not something to approve of, imo. It's not a manifestation of love and proclamation of polyamory, that should be praised and celebrated once out in the open. It's a major break of trust, consent and respect. Imo, again. So... I don't really understand what they meant there, but well...
Except from that it's a great book to read by yourself or with your partner(s) or even a friend, and just think about things in new ways, talk about them, feel more sexual freedom and pleasure through embracing one's sexuality and not feeling guilty about it.
No wonder, you have to book it (no pun intended) and wait in a queue to get your hands on it, where I live! It's very nice! I recommend!