A futuristic world with clearly defined rules for people is home to Ishtar Benten in The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time by Eli Yaakunah. Ishtar is a young woman who enjoys privileges as a result of working for The Agency, the source of all news, information, entertainment, and sports for the world. Ishtar’s stories are created for the Department of Written Chronicles, the pseudo-truth for non-news events, and have earned her a promotion to a new division of The Agency. With it, Ishtar is granted entrance into the realms of ‘The Gods’ with the power to control the world. Everything would be fine except that Ishtar has lost contact with a co-worker with whom she has fallen in love. The result of his activities, her interest in him, and her quest to find out what has happened to him lead her to take drastic steps that may lead to serious consequences.

In following the story of Ishtar Benten, the hierarchy of privilege and power in a clearly delineated social structure is challenged as the result of a seemingly random set of circumstances brings Ishtar into contact with other people outside of her regular circle.

All I can say is Wow! I had no idea where this story was going and the ending is amazing! The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time is a wonderfully creative story that illustrates Ishtar’s imaginative thought processes that were nurtured by her father and re-kindled by the characters with whom she becomes involved. Vivid descriptions of sex represent Ishtar’s mental and emotional relationship to others in her life and serve as the catalyst to her plans and decisions to follow her conscience.

Ishtar Benten works for the Agency, making stories for the Written Chronicles, and then one day she is promoted to Scriptwriting. Now she not only writes stories to publish as news, but she makes stories that turn to reality. The same day she receives her promotion, her almost lover, Utu, disappears and she finds Arianne, a memory thief, in her home, trying to steal her data. Join Ishtar Benten in The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time by Eli Yaakunah as she tries to find the truth in a world where what the Agency writes is reality.

I thought the last chapter was all real; then I checked - yep it’s literary fiction. It was brilliant. The way it was written is remarkable. The title is kind of intriguing; it was explained towards the end of the story and it's perfect. It took me two chapters to get into the book but after the second chapter I couldn't put it down. The plot moved slowly towards a very explosive climax. Eli Yaakunah used a unique style of writing, because this is the first time I have read such a style. She combined prose and poetry, so I really had to pay attention because there were lots of figures of speech. And sometimes I couldn't distinguish between reality and Ishtar’s imagination, so I did a lot of going back and forth while reading but that’s fine. I totally enjoyed The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time. This is definitely a five-star book.

The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time by Eli Yaakunah is a novel with a lot of suspense, eroticism, passion, and mystery that revolves around the central character, Ishtar. Ishtar is in love with someone who is highly successful but he disappears one day under mysterious circumstances. She finds out that she is the key to the mystery and everything now revolves around how she carries out the assignment.



The novel has explicit and graphic scenes which make it highly erotic, though breaking away from the usual conventions. However, it is mainly a dystopian adventure having love and freedom of expression as its central themes. The story line is excellent and the characters and the situations are very genuine. Though the underlying theme is love, the author depicts it in many different forms, creating an ambiance of excitement for readers. The word choices are also effective.



The style of writing is excellent - it is bold and unconventional and the story has an esoteric vibe to it. The central character, Ishtar, is portrayed as someone who is sexually active and she imagines how it would be to make love to a person whenever she meets someone. The story has many layers to it which show the author's aesthetic abilities.

I have to admit that the first chapter really threw me. It was mystical and lyrical, but so physical, sexual, and maternal that my mind really didn't know how to process it. I kind of read the chapter like poetry, reading once silently to myself, once out loud to hear how it sounded, and then again to finally interpret. The main portion of the book is in first person narration, but we really don't get a clear idea of who the narrator is. Perhaps this was intentional? To reflect that the narrator could be any one woman on her journey through life? That is what I interpreted this to mean, and if so, that is completely brilliant and a thoughtful and intelligent way to allow readers to assimilate themselves into the story and the plot.

The writing style was poetic and lyrical, being composed of almost too much description at times, which was so flowery and flowing that you got caught up in the descriptions and forgot what was happening with the plot. It isn't a criticism, because I think the book did what it was supposed to do eloquently and with emotion, but the plot was very much sacrificed in favor of the writing. The plot was good, but the writing was exemplary. In the face of such lyrical writing, it would have been nice if the thought behind the plot and the action of the story was as well constructed as the actual writing of the story. I did enjoy the almost Eastern flavor given to this dystopian future. This book actually made me think quite a lot about how this genre has been interpreted in popular literature and why The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time is so different and unique from other books that reflect a similar premise and plot. A very thought provoking story, and one that will probably stick with me for some time.