Read Donna Banta's prize-winning novel Mormon Erotica!

After forty-five years of adhering to his faith, Jim Maxwell falls dismally short of the Mormon ideal. A divorced single dad, he's a chronic grumbler who refuses to attend the ward mix and mingles. While his testimony of the restored gospel remains firm, he's agnostic about marriage. That is, until his old girlfriend -- a lapsed Latter-day Saint and author of Mormon "erotica" -- walks back into his life...

Here's what people are saying about Mormon Erotica:

From Viga Boland for Readers' Favorite: I loved this book. Mormon Erotica by Donna Banta is, by far, one of the most enjoyable and most informative books I’ve read this year. I started and finished it within a few hours. It kept me riveted like the best thrillers do…except Mormon Erotica is anything but a thriller. It’s humorous and eye-opening, yet in some respects, annoying. Why annoying? read more of this review

From writer and editor Holly Welker: Mormon Erotica, the new novel from Donna Banta, is a joyous page-turner that, despite the title, is far more concerned with love and romance than sex. While the book contains plenty of reflection on Mormon attitudes toward sex and marriage, the action depicted is strictly PG. As with so many romance novels, the suspense lies not in whether it will end with its hero and heroine poised to live happily ever after, but what sorts of personal discoveries and growth will make them worthy of that reward. I was always curious about and frequently surprised by the routes the characters forged to true love. read more of this review

From poet and author Leah Elliot: The story follows Jim Maxwell, an affable forty-something divorced dad living in California’s Bay Area, as he navigates parenting, friendship and family, his love life, and his faith as a Mormon who has concluded that he believes in the Gospel, but is agnostic about marriage. Much to his sister Kellie’s dismay, Jim spends more time “[sitting] around Starbucks drinking hot chocolate with lesbians” than he does hunting for a faithful Mormon wife. (Kellie has some of the most deliciously hilarious lines of dialogue in the book, one of my favorites being her lament, “You can’t find a decent woman at Starbucks.”)

Everything changes for Jim when he bumps into an old college flame at a wedding reception. Sadie Gordon has left the Church and makes her living writing PG-13ish fiction, deemed porn by Jim’s bishop and his neurotic ex-wife. Though the interim years have led Jim and Sadie to different conclusions about the Church, they discover that the flame they had for each other in college is still burning. But for love to win the day, Jim and Sadie must navigate their differences, as well as weathering the opinions, and intrusions, of family and friends, all while Jim does his best show up as a father for a whip-smart teenage daughter with some secrets of her own. read more of this review

From writer and editor Jeff Laver: Donna Banta takes us on a fascinating exploration of the world of modern Mormonism--a world where modern people sometimes struggle with the ever present legacy of the past, along with typical worries about the hereafter. But this story, which is not actually erotica, is an entertaining and emotional examination of lives firmly planted in the here and now. read this review