O's Top 20 Books to Read This Summer

In her 40s, Dederer found herself overcome by "tidal, ridiculous lust." She craved her husband's body but fantasized about the touch of strangers. She worried: Was this unseemly for a middle-aged mother of two? For any woman of any age? A therapist suggested she might suffer from "hypersexuality." She digs up her journals from the promiscuous days of her teens and 20s, hoping to retrace her misspent youth and find the roots of her "sex-crazed nature." But her ultimate discovery is that it's time to shut down her "interior slut-shaming." In answer to the question "Why all the sex?," she simply concludes, "I liked it."