Skin Contact

Faison’s assured debut explores the ripple effect of a couple’s decision to open their marriage. Frances and Ben, together since college, never considered such a thing. But after the sudden death of 30-year-old Frances’s mother, Frances is left longing for a way to break through her emotional numbness. A flirtatious exchange with Lily, the couple’s server at a restaurant, leads to an intensely pleasurable night for all three—but it’s February 2020, and a global pandemic puts any further plans with Lily on hold. A couple of years later, as the world opens back up, Frances and Ben resume exploring the boundaries of their relationship, adapting to each other’s changing desires. Meanwhile, their friends and family are alternately perplexed, intrigued, and titillated by their experimenting. The novel’s structure—which shifts back and forth from the happy early years of Ben and Frances’s marriage to the couple’s expanded life with people they’ve dated, including Lily—is largely successful, though some of the flashbacks feel disconnected, particularly those centered on Frances’s mother and grandmother. Still, Faison cleverly mirrors the phases of the couple’s open relationship with shifts in tone, moving from sexy and exciting to increased emotional intensity and vulnerability. Readers will find it an intimate and insightful story of modern romance. (June)