Smut is not a dirty word.
Neither is women’s pleasure.

Somewhere between admitting we read romance and admitting exactly how much romance we read, there is often a little lowering of the voice. A laugh. A disclaimer. “It’s a bit smutty.” As though a woman enjoying a book with sex in it ought to supply an explanation with the receipt.

I would rather we kept the book and lost the apology.

Spice, smut, open-door romance: readers use different words for different kinds of heat. They are useful shorthand, although they do not tell us everything about a story. What interests me is why the presence of desire so often becomes a reason to dismiss the whole book—and the woman reading it.

Let her want something.

There is something powerful about a heroine who wants. Who notices a man, feels the attraction and has an inner life that is not organised entirely around being useful, agreeable or impressive to somebody else.

She might be competent at work and a disaster at keeping her composure. She might want sex, affection, independence, a different future, or all four. Those desires can exist in the same person. She does not have to become less intelligent to be turned on.

For me, empowering romance gives her room to make choices. It lets her initiate, hesitate, change her mind and ask for what she wants. Her pleasure matters. So does her ability to say no.

The heat is in the choices.

An explicit scene can do much more than tell us where everybody’s hands are. It can reveal who listens. Who assumes. Who feels safe enough to stop performing. Who is willing to be seen without the polished version of themselves in place.

That is where intimacy becomes part of character. A heroine’s yes means something because it belongs to her. A partner paying attention can be far more compelling than a partner who simply arrives with astonishing confidence and excellent lighting.

Explicitness alone does not make a book empowering. The question is what the story does with desire, power and the people involved. More detail is not automatically more agency.

A fantasy does not need a defence brief.

Women do not all want the same books, the same relationships or the same kinds of fantasy. Some love gentle romance. Some want deliciously complicated fictional men. Some prefer a closed bedroom door. Others would like that door removed from its hinges.

Reading taste is not a character reference. Enjoying a fictional situation does not oblige a reader to want it in her own life. We can discuss a story critically and still enjoy it; we can put it down when it stops working for us.

I do not think every spicy book needs to prove a social benefit before anyone is allowed to enjoy it. Pleasure is a perfectly good reason to read. So are curiosity, laughter and wanting one evening that belongs to you.

Evie has a life. She also has a libido.

In Ideally Positioned, Evie Hartley works in luxury Sydney real estate. She understands presentation, expectations and the professional smile. Tristan Davidson makes keeping that smile entirely professional rather difficult.

The attraction arrives early. What takes more work is trust: the difference between being wanted and being able to choose a life for yourself. The book includes explicit consensual intimacy alongside difficult emotional themes; the reading guide and content notes explain what to expect.

That is the conversation I want to leave open. A woman can be ambitious, funny, complicated and sexual. She can enjoy the story without shrinking herself to make other people comfortable.

Call it spice. Call it smut. Just do not make enjoying it something she has to apologise for.