I read this on the recommendation of a friend who suggested it might help clear things up for me. She winked when she said it. And so, as a man, I realize I am not the target audience, which makes this a difficult thing to review.
The good: several of my female friends have told me that this book changed their lives. Evidently there is good advice here, and it definitely cleared up some misconceptions I had around women's sexuality. To that extent, if you can suspend your disbelief, this is probably a great read.
The bad: I mentioned suspension of disbelief. Nagoski often refers to "the science," claiming that whatever study proves her point. However, my overwhelming feeling throughout the book was that Nagoski had ideas that empirically seemed to work out, and was trying to justify them through the literature. While there are quite a few citations (none of which I followed up on), the studies she describes simply /reek/ of bad science. They are either studies about rats that she's extrapolated to human behavior, or they are unreplicated studies of n<50. This is a classic failure mode in the search for truth; mining the literature for claims that support an a priori belief, rather than synthesizing the literature into a coherent worldview.
While the facade of science probably lends an air of legitimacy to what otherwise would be a book of just-so stories, it completely falls flat to a scientifically-minded audience. And so I'm stymied here. Nagoski's methods are clearly bunk, but due to how many people I know personally whom have been helped by this book, I feel that I need to credit where it's due.
Should you get points for accidentally being right, even if your methods are completely wrong?
Another gripe: the prose here is rather egregious. It comes off a lot like having a chat-room conversation back in the early 2000s. For example, Nagoski doesn't seem to know the word "feelings," and instead, exclusively refers to "getting the Feels." There are a lot of strained analogies to popular culture, almost none of which I was familiar with --- and the ones I was, the metaphor didn't really connect. For example, she spent a few pages describing the plot of Groundhog Day, and then when she got around to her point, it really didn't seem to be related to Groundhog Day at all! I think it was about "why do vaginal and clitoral orgasms feel different from one another if they are REALLY AND TRULY JUST THE SAME THING?" but I can't remember.
Relatedly, the book espouses particularly bad ontology. As alluded to above, Nagoski decides by fiat that ALL ORGASMS ARE THE SAME. She adopts a non-standard definition of orgasm, and justifies this claim based on her new definition. She says, if you notice a distinction between vaginal and clitoral orgasms, that you are wrong. Because they are the same thing. "And besides, every orgasm is different from one another, so why differentiate?"
Nagoski makes this misstep many times throughout the book. Maybe it's just me splitting hairs, but she willingly and oftentimes redefines a word. Clearly she is attempting to remove stigma or get past some cultural blocks, or whatever, but make no mistake --- this is the work of a marketer, not a researcher. Nagoski evidently has something to sell here, which she admits, but it's unclear whether she's aware she's doing this, or whether her thinking really is this sloppy. Like it or not, words mean something, and we use them because they usefully carve distinctions that we'd like to make. It's fine to show us that these distinctions are mistaking the forest for the trees, but a better approach than saying "you're wrong, orgasm doesn't REALLY mean that" is "here's a better word that better carves reality at its joints."
The ugly: the major takeaway of this book seems to be "no matter what your sexuality is, it's normal." There's a lot of dark-arts psychology in the prose of this book, in an attempt to reassure the reader that they are "not broken." My initial, uncharitable response to this was "what sort of sad, weak person needs to seek reassurance from this?" But then I remembered the women who have praised this book to me, and quite a number of them are remarkably strong, wildly inspiring humans.
As such, I have reconsidered my view, and instead interpret the book's reaffirming attitude as evidence of just how fucked up women's sexuality must be in our culture. As a man, this is never going to be a thing I will experience first-hand, so any evidence is helpful to gain an honest understanding here. Maybe it's not weak people who feel that they're broken; maybe it's just everyone. If so, I guess I can get onboard with the book's approach, but it still feels a bit dishonest.
Overall, if you are like me, this book probably isn't a great investment of your time. There are definitely things to be learned here, but the vast majority of it is an owner's guide to contextualizing women's sexuality. My primary takeaways are that the expectation of sex leads to sexual excitement, regardless of whether or not the brain is into it --- and that getting rid of the expectation of sex from intimate touching can help alleviate stress and, paradoxically, lead to significantly better sex.