Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!)

esjro avatar reviewed on + 917 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 12


This book is the true story of how a busy couple with two demanding young daughters managed to have sex every day for 101 days, and in the process strengthened their marriage and rediscovered each other. Sound intriguing and possibly a tad titillating? I thought so too! Unfortunately, this book was about 280 pages too long. Let's be honest... myself and most people reading this book want the sordid details and perhaps a warm fuzzy feeling when the couple grows closer and rediscovers why they fell in love in the first place, but what we get instead is many scenes of childrens' misbehavior and illness, descriptions of chores facing a mostly stay at home mom, and many mentions of yoga. The titillation factor is definitely approaching zero - there are more descriptions of foot massages than erotic massage, and the author's attempt to describe their love-making gives me that same awkward feeling as when my parents kiss a little too long in front of me. (Don't take me there!) I also wonder how accurately the author gauges his wife's satisfaction - almost all the chapters have a happy ending for her (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) unless someone is physically ill.

The point of this book is that couples, especially parents and professional couples, need to make their relationship and time together a priority. And physical intimacy can lead to greater emotional intimacy. However that story could have been told in a more concise manner. I would have preferred to skip the descriptions of target lingerie and discussions of how the author styles his hair to appeal to his wife. (If you have the hard cover edition of this book with the picture of the author and his wife you will see that he has a very, very high forehead - based on the picture I don't think some of his hairstyles would have been very flattering. Indeed I found my mind wandering while reading this book and returning to pondering the size of the author's forehead.)

This would have been a great magazine article, but there was not nearly enough insight to hold my interest for 300 pages.