The volunteer by D.H. Jonathan

The volunteer Reviews

• 
  Ariana Paige

  The “Volunteer” is a really fun read. A college student facing suspension finds herself facing a seemingly impossible challenge if she wants to stay in school – to spend the next two month on campus completely naked. In the name of science, of course.
  
  This book by D.H. Jonathan is a seemingly light read that leads the reader into heavier topics like body image, sexual discovery, campus politics, public exploitation and all sorts of other intriguing stuff. None of these issues are treated with kid gloves, but the tone of the book always feels more like a romp than some serious tome.
  
  This light touch allows our narrator, the forced-to-be-nude Dani, to wander through some pretty deep material without losing the single most vital aspect of this book – her innocence. We see this crazy experiment though her eyes, naivete and all. Her trepidation as she stares down one challenging situation after another feels authentic, and that's critical too. You can't help but root for her, even as you shake your head and say “No, don't do it!”
  
  Being naked in public, exposed in situation where everyone else is dressed, is a titillating notion (and experience!). Add the coercive aspect to Dani's experience, it touches on all sorts of hot (and fun) buttons. Who hasn't had the nightmare about suddenly realizing you are naked at the office or in the classroom? Well, Dani has to live it every day, the lucky girl.
  
  I very much enjoyed this book. I did feel like it could have wrapped up a bit quicker than it did, but the ending was rewarding. I also wish the sexual content could have been a bit more blunt, overt, and yes, (because my brain is wired this way) dirtier. Then again, Dani is who Dani is, and her remaining innocent in our eyes from beginning to end is a key to this book's success. Over all, it's a quality read. I absolutely recommend spending a little time with The “Volunteer.”
• 
  D.H. Jonathan

  I started this just for fun, while I was stuck on my "serious" novel, but I really like how it developed. It is, at the moment, my favorite thing that I've written. So, of course I'm going to give it five stars.
• 
  Mary Devereaux

  This book is not for the faint at heart - or for those (like myself) that like to put themselves into the POV of the protagonist. Because, unless you have the desire to be naked all the time, the thought of it here will give you the willies.
  
  Or perhaps that's my own body image issues shining through?
  The book does make you think...
  
  This was my first book ever in the "forced to be naked" realm. It was interesting to see how the characters worked this out. I have to say that I felt like Danielle was taken advantage of - her circumstances and need to not lose everything made her an open target. Perhaps that's the mom in me. It was interesting to watch her go from feeling forced into the situation to enjoying it.
  
  The story is outlandish. But is that because we see being naked as wrong? Because we don't want to see someone naked because it makes us uncomfortable? Because society tells us we must wear clothing? Who know... all of the above, maybe?
  
  All that aside, it is a well written book, some editing issues that are easily overlooked. It's an interesting look at life and self discovery, empowerment and self acceptance.
  
  I highly recommend it.
• 
  Bill Anderson

  Riveting naturist novel
  
  We are born naked and then taught that being naked is wrong. Being a young woman who never was naked in front of another person to being naked 24/7 was a big jump. A reluctant 'volunteer' to a sociology project, Dani tells her story. The ending has an interesting twist. A great book well worth reading.
• 
  Stan Hutchings

  Not a book for everyone, but it's a NIP/OON tour de force. The blurb gives the premise and theme of the book, but doesn't do Dani's experience justice. Given the choice of either being expelled in disgrace and losing her scholarship, or else "volunteering" for a sociological project to study the effects of a naked student on campus, she chooses to go naked on the campus 24/7. During her two months of the study, she goes completely naked to classes, walks across the campus, eats in the cafeteria, and interacts with her professors and fellow students. She experiences a whole range of very strong emotions, from despair to euphoria, all of which are described in great detail by the author. Also fascinating was the motivation of the study; and the many varied reactions of her professors, her family and friends, the media, and fellow students. If you're fascinated by NIP, OON, CMNF/CFNF literature, you'll probably love this book.
• 
  Johnny

  
  Ever dreamed about being naked in school? What would happen during a sociological experiment at a southwestern university when one girl is required to spend the entire semester completely naked? No clothing is allowed at all.
  
  As a long-time nudist myself, I found "The Volunteer" to be rather plausible in most regards. Somewhat based on a real-life story of Andrew Martinez, The Naked Guy who actually did go naked in school in support of body acceptance during the early 1990s.
  
  This book is well-written enough to keep my interest all the way through. Read about Naked Dani's experience and consider what life could be like for everyone if we lived in the Naked Dimension. I would certainly like to live there. This story makes you think a little and maybe even makes you want to try being natural yourself.
  
  It's a good, cheap read. I recommend it. Get it.
• 
  Claire

  Read as part of the Goodreads Summer Reading Challenge. Check out how I'm doing —
  https://lovethevillain.wordpress.com/...
  
  This is not the sort of book I would normally pick up and read. Thanks to the
  reading challenge I'm currently taking part in, I needed a book containing a nudist. Utterly mortified at the thought of picking up one of the many 'feel-good romance' books available, I thought I'd plump for something a little different.
  
  The synopsis of this book describes it as a girl on university campus who is forced into a sociological study that leaves her naked in her university.
  What I didn't expect was the borderline pornography of the book.
  
  
  
  First of all, Dani, the heroine of the story, deserves to lose her scholarship. She is a cheat. After copying another girls paper, she is caught and then given an impossible choice — spend the rest of the term naked, or lose everything she's worked so hard for.
  She decides to go naked.
  I think I might have alerted the authorities to the obvious blackmail and unusual punishment, but that's just me.
  Should I mention the fact that Dani is studying pre-law? She wants to be a lawyer when she grows up, but still thinks this is an acceptable thing to do. Good luck, love.
  
  So, now she's naked everywhere she goes. Prohibited from wearing any sort of clothing. Of course, she's embarrassed at first, but also turned on. She proceeds to masturbate for most of the book, only really leaving off to give a teacher a show and nearly getting raped. Then she just goes back to 'giving herself relief'. She isn't traumatized by the 'almost' rape at all. In fact, after a brief coercion to give Dani an A, it's never mentioned again.
  
  Biden looked at the floor. “What do you want?” he finally asked. “First of all, Danielle gets an A in your course. Second, she never has to attend your class again. I can’t trust you with her.
  
  
  
  Full detail is given into how she handles being naked when she's on her period, and extensive detail is given to describe her enlarged and 'shiny, pink' labia after she's finished playing with herself.
  
  ...my labia minora were poking out even further than usual from my already pink outer folds.
  
  I straddled the commode without sitting down, and quickly went to work on my swollen clitoris. The first orgasm wasn’t satisfying enough, so I got myself off two more times...
  
  
  
  This is a book that tries to be a message about body standards and inner-beauty, and just ends up cheapening the very thing it's trying to promote by being too porny. Firstly, Dani has no sense of boundaries. After walking around naked for a while she seems to think it's perfectly fine to rip a towel off another girl and ogle her private areas. That would be classed as abuse anywhere else.
  Also, she automatically assumes that the girls being nice to her are lesbian, and the guys that don't look at her chest are gay. She's trying to promote acceptance here, but falls into stereotyping far too easily.
  
  The only sensible person in this whole book is her father. He eventually rats out the school to the press and gets the teachers in court of blackmail. Unfortunately, this is all negated when Dani turns up to tell everyone she wants to stay naked and gets the teachers reinstated.
  What. The. Hell?
  
  
  
  This just isn't what it's advertised as. It's weird. It's written like a YA book — I'm not dissing the writing at all, it was actually written really well, but the content is obviously not for a younger audience. I thought the plot was boring, Dani was an unbelievable character and the dirty scenes weren't even written well. I'd suggest skipping this entirely and buying yourself something clearly marked 'pornography'. It'll probably be better.
• 
  P.A. Choi

  Should be required reading for everyone.
  
  I've spent many long sessions searching for good erotica and nudism stories (which are not always the same thing), to little avail on Amazon, where I can browse for days through works penned by a thousand different authors, all of them being not quite my style, or horribly written, or both. I am glad to say that D.H. Jonathan's "The Volunteer" is both well-written and precisely my style. A great find.
  
  I have a distaste for overtly sexual erotica that clinically describes the act. Good erotica is about the erotic situations, and while D.H. Jonathan and myself both agree that the body isn't automatically sexual, we are both accepting that it sometimes is, that nudity has an air of both wholesomeness and eroticism to it, and "The Volunteer" captures that perfectly, and is, as I said, a book seemingly written just for me.
  
  The message the book presents is important, I believe, and should be read and understood by everybody in modern Western society. And that message is simply a plea to re-evaluate how we approach nudity in our society. This is something I believe is already happening, but this book keeps the idea fresh in mind. Perhaps not for those who need it most, as the people who are no doubt drawn to this book already have a healthy attitude about it. But it is available in paperback. It would be quite amusing to take copies of the book and leave them in used bookstores, or in Little Library boxes, or in doctors' offices or coffee shops. Just an idea. :)
  
  The premise is great, and excites a mind like mine: what if a student, a female student, specifically, an attractive female student specifically, had to go nude for an entire semester? Right away the idea is thrilling and erotic. It is the perfect setup, and the ideas it makes the reader confront put it above a mere smut tale; the author has something to say here. And throughout the book, there are moments where sexuality is addressed, quite naturally, mind you, and not exploitatively. The whole thing feels organic and true, and I can't quite say I would call this an erotica tale, though I certainly purchased and read it as such. And it satisfied me completely, because this was the exact type of story I was looking for. And I admire the author's zaniness at times, including some wild cameos and real-world connections (the identity of one particularly unsavory character made me chuckle and shake my head).
  
  I also enjoyed its references and characters' discussion about actual nude pop culture topics, like the "walk of shame" in Game of Thrones, which I incidentally saw for the first time less than a month before reading The Volunteer, and which fascinated me. It makes the book topical and crosses the threshold from fiction to an honest discussion between the book and the reader.
  
  I might, at this moment, voice my displeasure at the main character Dani's decision to shave halfway through the novel. I am a champion of "let it grow," so I enjoyed the first half of the book a hair (no pun intended) more than the latter half. Also, it struck me at about three quarters of the way through, but... Dani at no point ever poops. We hear of the trials of hygiene while being a nudist, but we don't live through one of the most trying truths of all: everybody has to poop at some point.
  
  Those are humorous nitpicks, mind you. Overall, I loved "The Volunteer." My only complaints would be that it could have gone even further in addressing certain issues, such as the lingering effects of an encounter with the previously-mentioned unsavory character, and the blurred line between sexualized nudity and wholesome nudity. I also was expecting things to get crazier, to build to a crescendo where throngs of other students decide to shed their clothes with Dani, but the premise is portrayed realistically, and as such I cannot fault the plot at all. We may see some of these things in a sequel. I hope the author continues with a part 2, and I hope for similarly-themed works from him (her?) and other authors. Two thumbs up!
• 
  E. Hopkins

  I enjoyed reading this book. It had a flowing, engaging, storyline that kept me going. At the end, I was left feeling not sure who the real "bad guy" was: Dr. Slater, who used Dani as a lab rat, or Dani's father: a conservative Christian repulsed by Dr. Slater's study, and this ambiguity is a good thing; it made me think, and I commend the author for that.
  Unfortunately, I felt that D.H. Jonathan uses too many instances and details of Dani's sexual feelings and masturbation scenes. If this book is really supposed to be about nudity not being sexual, it seems rather contradictory to that message when the author frequently details Dani's orgasms, Dani going pee after these orgasms, and referring many times throughout the story to Dani's butt, thighs, breasts and vulva, especially when Jonathan never gives any reference to Dani's "non-sensitive" body parts. 1 or 2 references to the parts of Dani that are normally covered would have been sufficient, just to show how vulnerable Dani is feeling about having these parts of her exposed.
  Something that bothered me a lot is when D.H. Jonathan has Miley Cyrus naked on a pretend wrecking ball, apparently intending to make a spectacle of herself. Miley Cyrus is an actual, living person, who could easily feel quite slurred being used in a novel in this way.
  Nonetheless, these "down" aspects aside, I loved Dani being so outspoken, especially in the final scene about her body being a wonderful thing, and being able to feel freedom with her body, and how she serves as a spokesperson about how we should ALL feel about our bodies. Maybe, one day, that really will become a reality all over the world, when we all can differentiate between nudity and sexuality, and be able to legally and socially-acceptably be nude when and where we choose.
• 
  Gary D

  An Excellent Tale!
  
  When I finish a book and find that I truly care what happened to the characters- that’s a great story!!
• 
  Jen Hawkins

  The "Volunteer" is the story of a college student who choses to participate in a sociological study on people's reactions to nudity in order to avoid explusion from college. The catch is, she has to live her life naked in public for two months in order to save her college career. As crazy as that premise sounds, this book really drew me into her story. I felt her struggle with both the emotions and the physical sensations of being naked around the people she has known for a while. The fact that her Christian faith was not excluded from her coping mechanisms just adds a sense of realism to this college student's character. For a book labeled as "erotica" there is a lot going on besides sex (and oddly enough, there's very little actual sex). As interesting as the story is when she's naked, it gets even more involved when she puts the clothes back on and begins to crave what she had before, during the two months of the study...
• 
  R. Wellvyne

  The “Volunteer” is a wonderful book told from the point of view of a young woman who spends several months naked 24/7 and watches the impact it has on society- as well as on herself.
  It is ENF (embarrassed naked female) at its best and you can tell the author understands the feeling of public nudity and the way it impacts people differently. Danielle runs the emotional gamut and all of the feelings and reactions feel genuine and earned. I loved watching her growth and hope there is more of her story to come!
• 
  David Leemon

  This book has an, um, interesting premise. But it also has interesting, well-developed characters, and a nice amount of suspense. The one problem is that Dani's basic predicament is described over and over again. I'll have to report the author to the Department of Redundancy Department.
  
  If you're looking for something a little bit different, this might be worth looking into.
• 
  Diana Artis-hood

  I think that D.H. Jonathon did an awesome job at tapping into a young woman's feelings during an embarrassing moment in her life. I've never heard of an author writing about nudism. Great job! I'm looking forward to reading more of your books.
• 
  Sohang Chopra

  An interesting story about a woman who is forced to town nude in her college campus, and the reactions of people to her nudity.
• 
  Jens

  This is one of those books where you have to have a strong interest in the subject matter, because the plot, characters and prose style aren’t enough on their own. There are a lot of novels in this category, about things like baseball, spaceships or Regency England. This one happens to be about public nudity.
  
  Not that it’s porn. I had to skim the first chapters on Amazon before buying, to make sure of that, because there’s a lot of terribly-written amateur porn on the topic of young women coerced into going naked in public. But this is actually a serious, if lightweight, attempt to approach the idea from a nudist perspective. As a result it’s a fun (and mildly exciting) potato-chip read for nudists / naturists / people who like being naked and wish society didn’t have problems with that. Anyone not caught up in the premise won’t want to slog through the competent-but-featureless prose or the predictable plot.
  
  So yes: our heroine Dani, a semi-virginal college sophomore from conservative Texas, cheats on a term paper and gets the option to avoid expulsion if she’ll “volunteer” for a sociology experiment about public nudity. She'll be required to stay entirely nude 24/7 for two months, while being discreetly followed by research assistants with cameras studying people's reactions to her.
  
  Dani is horrified and humiliated but agrees in order to salvage her education and avoid telling her parents about the cheating. As time goes on, she comes to enjoy the nudity itself, and has a love/hate relationship with the constant attention. She ends up (not really a spoiler) a confirmed nudist.
  
  Dani seems a fairly realistic character, and some of her feelings echo mine from the first few times I went naked (though not in front of clothed strangers!) The author's bio says he's done a lot of nude artist's modeling, and it shows. Some of the details get repetitive, and I could have done with fewer descriptions of the state of Dani's nipples and labia, but it didn’t feel like the author was actively trying to titillate, so much as to show how awkward the uncovered body can be in public. (There is one honest-to-god sex scene near the end, as well as an attempted rape earlier on that seemed to be handled sensitively enough, though as a non-woman I can’t really judge that.)
  
  So yes: if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of book you'll like. Have fun!
• 
  Cody Enos

  Overall I liked what this book was going for and trying to do, however there were a lot of smaller problems that added up making this an alright at best attempt.
  
  For starters, the premise is interesting and I really enjoyed the confusion the body goes through while trying to unlearn and re-learn certain societal aspects. Like understanding that being naked does not mean sexual even though society has trained us to think that and how our bodies respond to being naked the first few times.
  
  Unfortunately, I didn’t think the book went far enough. It was mostly focused on her (the main protagonist’s) exhibitionism. Which is fine, but I wished there was more attention to non sexual nudity and how that progressed.
  
  I found it interesting that there are a lot of interesting side characters that we never truly get to know. After Dani goes naked she’s shunned by her friends and gains new ones, but most of the scenes with her new friends are not hanging out, but eating. She talks a bit about wanting to go to Law school and meeting new law friends, but she never dives into the legality of what she’s doing or even into the contract that she signed. I wished there was more of the social discussion than “oh shit you’re naked” responses.
  
  I hated all the adults. Every single adult did something horrible to Dani and they all were let off lightly. Example: a teacher tries to rape her. Instead of that teacher being expelled right then and there they blackmail him into giving Dani an A. And then the media circus around Dani was so irresponsible and how they were parading her nudity out into the world to show that their college campus has a high acceptance.
  
  I did not agree with the ending.
  
  Though, throughout all the annoying things that happened I did feel like the message was the strongest and is why I kept my rating at a 3. I would tentatively recommend this with a caveat.
• 
  Rachel

  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this book. It was a really interesting plot and overall a fun read. It just seemed somewhat repetitive to me the way Dani described her unusual situation of being naked on campus. The exact same description again and again. I get it! 🙄 I also didn’t like the sexual assault scene with her Chemistry instructor, Dr. Biden. If I remember correctly, Dani said he almost assaulted her- GIRL HE DID!