Synopses & Reviews
Sometimes the perfect Chanukah gift can change everything.
Newly divorced stone butch Jordan moves into her friend Leah’s spare room, ready, at 49, to take on a new job and finally explore kink and polyamory. But moving to NYC during the holidays sends grief crashing through her, and Jordan realizes that when she isn’t solely focused on caring for others, her own feelings are unavoidable. Including her feelings for Leah.
51 year old queer femme Leah, an experienced submissive kink educator who owns a sex shop, has recently come to terms with being gray ace and is trying to rework her life and relationships to honor that.
Leah has a brainstorm to help them both: she offers Jordan eight kink lessons, one for each night of Chanukah, to help Jordan find her feet as a novice dominant, and to create a structured space where Leah can work on more deeply honoring her own consent, now that she knows she’s gray ace.
She’d planned to keep it casual, but instead the experience opens cracks in the armor Leah’s been using to keep people at a distance and keep herself safe. Now she needs to grapple with the trauma that’s been impacting her life for years.
Can these two autistic queers find ways to cope with the changes they are making in their lives and support each other, as they build something new they hadn’t thought was possible?
This kinky polyamorous Chanukah f/f romance includes a friends to lovers, roommates to lovers, kink lessons, seasoned romance and getting your groove back tropes, and polyamorous, gray ace, pansexual, Jewish, fat, autistic, disabled, arthritis, PTSD and depression representation.
Review
“This book really has it all gift wrapped in a lovely package and I highly recommend giving it a read.” Michelle Blakey at The Lesbian Review
Review
“On the polyamorous aspects of this novel, I really loved that around the main romantic thread of Jordan and Leah, there was also the beginnings of other relationships forming between Leah and Ellie, as well as between Jordan and Shiloh. At no point did these other relationships take away from anything, and it was just gorgeous to see them put on the page as though it was a totally normal thing seen in fiction.” Nicole Field, editor of Happiness in Numbers
Review
“Overall, Eight Kinky Nights is amazing. The characters feel very real and I connected with many of them. I’m happy that this book exists and maybe reading it will become a hannukkah tradition.” Katie at Bookishly Thinking
About the Author
Xan West is the nom de plume of Corey Alexander, an autistic queer fat Jewish genderqueer writer and community activist with multiple disabilities who spends a lot of time on Twitter.