LEAP, the imprint of Bonnier Books UK focusing on inspiring positive personal and collective change, has pre-empted Pleasure by writer, broadcaster and host of event series Sex Talks, Emma-Louise Boynton.
Carole Tonkinson, publisher, acquired UK & Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Abigail Bergstrom at Bergstrom Studio.
Part memoir, part cultural critique, Pleasure explores Emma-Louise Boynton’s own journey of becoming disconnected from her body and what it took to reconnect through pleasure. Drawing on personal experience, interviews with experts, and immersive research, Boynton reveals how this rupture between self and body is not an individual failure but a systemic one – one shaped by history, beauty culture, sexual mythology, and the modern dating economy.
From narrow ideals around desirability and sexist narratives about aging, to the policing of women’s pleasure and the emotional alienation of app-based intimacy, Pleasure interrogates the forces that teach women to mistrust their bodies, disconnect from their desires, and prioritise performance over pleasure. Intimate and timely, Pleasure offers a hopeful and practical reimagining of what it means for women to reconnect to their bodies in an increasingly disconnected world and to reclaim their bodies and their pleasure.
Emma-Louise Boynton said: ‘For too long, women’s sexuality has been politicised, pathologized, and policed. In being disconnected from our sexuality, we have been disconnected from our bodies. This book tells the story of how I reconnected to my own body through reclaiming the very thing I had been taught to fear: pleasure. Let it be a rallying cry to reclaim your own.’
Carole Tonkinson, Publisher, said: ‘Emma-Louise has delivered a compulsively readable, deeply informed, enlightening and honest look at our relationship to our bodies and pleasure. She shares her own fearless and moving story and offers readers a way to reconnect with their desire and joy. I love this book.’
Emma-Louise Boynton is a writer, broadcaster and the creator and host of the sell-out live event series and media platform, Sex Talks. Inspired by her own experience doing sex therapy, Sex Talks exists to engender more open and honest conversations around typically taboo topics: sex, gender and the future of intimacy. Emma previously worked as a producer for the BBC and Sky News and for Tina Brown’s ‘Women in The World Summit’ in New York. She is also the co-founder of female-focused creative production agency, Her Hustle. She is currently in training to become an accredited sex and relationship coach.
Pleasure will be published by LEAP in hardback, eBook and audiobook on 28th May 2026.
