Title: Between the Sheets
Author: Madame Butterfly
Rating: 2 Stars / DNF at 23%
Format: Audiobook (ARC)
Review:

Between the Sheets caught my attention immediately with its premise: a bold, real-life account of a female sailor exploring the world through sexual escapades with her crewmates. I was ready for something empowering, steamy, and unconventional.

However, after reaching 23%, I’ve decided to put this one down.

The audiobook narration unfortunately didn’t help—it lacked emotion and polish. It felt more like someone reading for the first time, and the pacing often reminded me I was listening to someone turning pages rather than pulling me into a story.

The writing style also felt amateur and repetitive. While I appreciate that it’s based on true events, the book read more like a series of loosely connected encounters than a developed narrative. I would’ve loved to see even a light storyline or emotional arc to tie the scenes together and make the erotica more impactful. Instead, I found myself zoning out and not feeling any real connection to the narrator or her experiences.

This may work for readers who want something raw and unfiltered, but it just wasn’t for me. I admire the author’s vulnerability in sharing her story—it simply didn’t resonate in the way I hoped it would.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this ARC.

Honestly quite disappointing. The writing is basic-dare I say below average, it’s very simple and descriptive.
The dialogues are very dull and boring, it’s all very surface level and nothing really interesting-on the other hand, most of it is boring and borderline cringe. The storyline is basically nonexistent, it’s basically just smut. That wouldn’t be the issue if the smut was any good, however this is very boring and not interesting. It’s mostly just descriptive of the acts but there rarely ever is any build up and it’s not written in a captive manner. It is also very repetitive-both in the phrases used as well as the situations. It just feels like reading a diary who is just sleeping around without any extra excitement or emotion. I get that this is supposed to be autobiographical but after reading the synopsis I was expecting much more of this. The part about Jeremy felt sort of predatory and other parts also set off the alarm bells.
There are also some mistakes- for instance it’s not Slovakian-it’s Slovak, that’s basic knowledge and should have been checked and corrected during edits.
Not to mention that the audio isn’t the best-the chapters are not cut properly and each NetGalley chapter includes multiple of the actual chapters. The narration also is not the best, some parts should have been re-recorded as you can clearly hear whenever the narrator stumbled or got lost in the text.
Overall it felt like reading a diary of a horny teenage boy with the vocabulary of a forty year old.

DNF - this audio is just not good.. I like the idea of this book but the editing and narration needs work. I couldn’t keep listening.

DNF @ 20%

Between the Sheets by "Madame Butterfly" was horrible. I love reading spicy books, but this is not that. There's no substance to it, it's nothing more than her bragging about her conquests, making immature and questionable decisions. What made it so I could take no more were her regular stumbling over the words that she wrote and her uneven tone. This would have benefitted from a professional narrator, but, again, due to the lack of substance, just barely.

Memoir + Erotica? I was intrigued.

I hope I have some constructive feedback.
The audiobook was rough. The transition/silence/static at the beginning of each chapter is jarring. The sentence structure is overly "he did this. I did that. He did this. I did that." As the reader it didn't translate into feelings of lust or arousal. Instead, it felt like a history textbook, but with detailed sexual escapades.

I am so glad the author had these experiences and gives representation to women having lots of consensual no strings sex. The author being the narrator though instead of a voice actor leads to choppy sentences devoid of emotion.

For a book with so much sex parts of the audiobook kept ruining the illusion and felt ultimately sterile and unsexy.

DNF at 18% I was really curious about this since it was "true"... This was not good and I would not recommend. The narration was monotone and had no emotion and there was almost no plot. This was six hours of a collection of sexcapade stories while she sailed the sees. I was less than 2 minutes before the shenanigans begins.....With thanks and apologies to NetGalley for an ALC.

Narrated by Madame Butterfly
Presented by BooksGoSocial Audio

DNF @ 38%

Admittedly, it's my fault for being curious.

This is literally just a woman describing every sexual encounter she has.

That's it.

There's no feminism, no new way of thinking, no female empowerment. It's literally just a woman having lots of sex with multiple people and describing each act in awful detail, often with embarrassing similes and metaphors (lots of 'oysters' and 'precious pearls').

Plus, it's narrated by the author who sounds like she's never narrated anything in her life. There's no emotion, no inflection, no change in pace or tone or anything. It's just a monotone reading words.

I was curious in particular about the 'at sea' portion and was hoping there would be a look at the life of a woman in a typically male role, but I still have no idea what kind of ships this woman was sailing on and if indeed there was actually any sailing at all, since everything seemed to tee off at bars and beaches.

This was utter trash from the second it started and 38% was as far as I could stomach.

Do not recommend to anyone, to be honest. Even readers interested in the kinky details of her sex life will likely find more excitement elsewhere.

Hard no.

With thanks and apologies to NetGalley for an audio ARC

This book is a memoir, but focused only on highlighting her sexcapades while working on a variety of sail boats, and traveling, for a few years.

It was a different book than the typical memoir. it really was specifically her sexual journey and encounters during her travels. She has lots of stories, that's for sure!

I'm glad to read a female so free in her sexuality.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

“he plundered her treasure to find the pearl… “the audio speaker sounds like the usual author for a christian romance so the words are weird to listen to. “He sailed further south” honestly the author really thought about the sexual innuendoes staying in the nautical theme. “TICKLED MY OYSTER!” This isn’t a great book but I couldn’t stop listening to see what was going to be said next.

Thank you NetGalley for letting me listen and review. I’m shocked 😶‍🌫️

Reading the description of this book, I thought it would be interesting. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this audiobook. I liked the concept and openness of the book. However, I found the execution to be lacking. I was hoping for there to be deeper depictions and imagery. It all seemed very surface level. I know this is the author’s story, but I would have preferred a different narrator.