100 Books Like Unmasked

I love this memoir because Leslie Morgan is a wise, funny, articulate, sex-positive, feminist BFF, who shares her emotional and sexual journey in the year after divorce and before turning 50 with pride rather than shame as she renounces the drab ex-wife role, dresses alluringly, and dates wildly.

Writing about sex and dating can be a cliché-ridden minefield, but Morgan enlivens the highs, lows, and middles with metaphors that resonate and invite you into the scene. And it’s not just about sex – it’s about the emotional truths that she learns along the way as she demonstrates an enjoyable way for older women to reclaim their sexual mojo and feel valued as an older woman. 

I love this memoir because Robin Rinaldi fiercely loves and trusts herself for being sexual, and shows us from the inside what it means to positively claim our sexuality in midlife.

Rinaldi undertook a brave and vulnerable journey—a year-long break from her companionable but passionless marriage to find passion by pursuing a variety of sexual traditions and relationships with men. Her story is not only an entertaining page-turner, but deeply vulnerable and satisfying. 

She chronicles her heart as well as her body, and reminds us that it is not always easy to take risks—there are challenges, heartaches, and rewards in creating a deeply satisfying life. Further modeling bravery, she also wrote an Atlantic article about transcending the slut shaming she received from writing the book.  

Delightful sexuality in a senior community! What better place to celebrate the different ways that women over 60 can enjoy a happy sex life—with themselves, men, women, or supernatural beings—than in a retirement community during the Pandemic lockdown? 

Stella Fosse skillfully and delightfully weaves stories of confident older women isolated in their cottages, alone or with partners, who know or discover what they want sexually, and find ways to pleasure themselves or others. Although residents are only allowed to wave at each other during their daily masked and distanced walk around the grounds, the more adventurous ones find ways to connect.

The stories all come together and culminate in a joyful post-pandemic unmasking at a romantic ball. Very sweet and positive!  

I recommend this hot and sexy collection of erotic fiction and memoir because for me it doubles as a source of arousal and a mesmerizing glimpse of the range of sexual activities that seniors (mostly hetero, some lesbians, some gay men) imagine and carry out.

From the slow sex of long-term lovers, to hand jobs offered despite arthritic hands or carpel tunnel, to the variety of ways married couples orchestrate hot love-making, to the pleasure of “in-the-meantime” lovers, these stories sizzle and burn. They expand our view of what is sexually possible as we age, and provide an inspiring and stimulating bedside reference for singles and couples of all ages.

To be savored one story at a time, not gulped down as a whole. 

I first learned about Logan Ury listening to the podcast This is Dating. While I was waiting on the second season to drop, I learned about Dr. Ury’s book.

I’m not trying to be ageist, but it was refreshing to hear dating advice from a professional that isn’t older and hasn’t been married for decades. Ury’s dating years being more recent meant she gets the landscape modern daters are struggling to find love in. Her perspective was instantly more relevant to me.

There were also several knowledge gems that she dropped throughout her book that I’d already learned the hard way, which gave me more confidence in giving the new-to-me information she presented a shot.

This is an excellent book about relationships and attachment theory, which describes our attachment styles in relationships. I loved reading this book because it taught me about my own attachment style and how I am in relationships.

This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about themselves in relationships. I enjoyed the concepts in the book and how relatable it was. I recommend this to every human being who would like a relationship. It is a great way to learn about yourself.

When I began researching love, one concept that blew me away was attachment styles: the theory that how our parents show us love—or don’t—determines how we love others. I learned that my style was to avoid intimacy; it was too scary. Understanding my style and my partner’s lets me begin to respond to him in ways that he needs instead of the way that feels natural to me.

This book explains how each of us is wired for relationships and how we can get past our unconscious needs to give partners love the way they need it. It includes little scenarios that helped me understand how our styles play out and made the book fun to read. It offers principles that codify the couple's relationship and exercises for couples to do together. 

Faith is a good friend of mine, a prayer partner, in fact, and she knows what she writes. I always appreciate a writer with gravitas and lived experience of wilderness seasons.

Faith has gone to deep, dark places but remained incredibly hopeful and faithful. This book is filled with wisdom, fresh biblical insight, and an invitation to a deeper connection with God, even in difficult seasons.  

It is not easy to write a self-help book without sounding pompous or unrealistic. This is why The Dance of Intimacy became a model for my own self-help books.

Lerner’s writing is straightforward, personal, and practical. She is, as am I, an unabashed feminist who understands that strengthening and/or healing relationships require the participation of both partners. First published in 2009 I have recommended this wise book to hundreds of clients. 

Long familiar to me, John O’Donohue’s books became a particular solace when grief arrived. I would recommend any of his books.

O’Donohue lived on the western coast of Ireland, and he had a distinctive wisdom about threshold spaces—those places between the life we have known and the one we cannot yet see—and a compassionate way of inviting us to receive the grace that comes as we stumble our way across those thresholds.

Eternal Echoes is one of my favorites among O’Donohue’s books. I am especially taken by his chapter about absence, where he acknowledges the deep ache of loss while also emphasizing that our losses are not utterly empty; they hold a hidden eternity that does not abandon us. I am both consoled and challenged by his assurance that grief is a mystery that knows its way.