ADELE by Leila Slimani – book review

Ok. Now this is one book I have seen on my Instagram feeds on daily basis and was so praised that I thought to myself: I MUST READ IT! I found it at the local library and got it last week. I already took it back and that says a lot about how quickly I devoured it.

I could simply describe “ADELE” as a sex addiction thriller where the addict is a woman. When we first meet Adele, she’s leaving the house before her husband and son wake up, looking for sex on the way to work.  She is meeting one of her lovers and although he seems quite rough and dominant, we find Adele slightly satisfied as she already knows his moves. She wants something new. She wants to be submitted to the most insane practices so she can feel complete.

For years on end she combined her sexless marriage to Richard with a secret life as a sex addict, wanting to seduce all men she meets, including her husband’s work colleagues. Her life is guided by her desires and she neglects her child and entire family only to be able to arrange her sex dates and get what she longs for. Although the book is narrated by her, I found myself sometimes being appalled by her personality, not liking her a bit or feeling sorry for her.

“She hates the idea that her beauty will be wasted, that her good mood will be for nothing”

Adele’s life becomes somewhat unbearable when her husband suffers an accident and she is forced to look after him for several months. She is not hiding anymore while Richard is in hospital and gets to the stage when she even brings men in the house and uses cocaine.

Adele has a phone she uses only for her affairs and Richard knows nothing about. She keeps it hidden in her handbag and never takes out. All these until she loses control. The day she needs to pick up Richard from the hospital she realises she can’t find the phonene but somehow gives up on looking for it.

She stops cleaning the house and feels sorry for herself, needing more sexual activity than usual just to feel the void. She still has a conscience not wanting to get caught and being at all times affected by her mother and the way she grew up, all her trauma starting from an early age.

It all turns for the worst when Richard finds her secret phone and reads all messages from all men she has been sleeping with, all dirty details of her affairs coming to light.

Although Adele is desperate and wants him back, I can’t stop but wondering if things would have been different for the two if Richard would have been better in bed. Would she still do it? Would she still feel the desperate need of being wanted? The validation that she is good?

All in all, a book I read because it was so popular and seen it everywhere. It is a good read and interesting as well but definitely not a must.