Exactly how steamy is this story?
PG-13
There may be a couple pretty steamy sex scenes in Jellicoe Road, but if you're looking for 50 Shades of Grey, you're not going to find it here. If anything, sex in this book is the characters' way of searching for connection with each other, of seeking a way to ease their pain and feel something apart from it, even it's just for a short time.
Take Narnie and Jude, for instance. When the two of them have sex, Narnie uses it as an opportunity to literally release the loss and grief she's kept penned up since the accident. "[Jude] had never heard emotion from Narnie before," Hannah's manuscript describes. "And now, it was so loud, so gut-wrenching that he wanted to cover her mouth with his hand […] But Narnie had held it in for too long" (22.86). Clearly she wants to be close to him, but she also allows herself some freedom from her crippling emotions.
As long as we're analyzing sex scenes (which sounds creepy when you think about it), let's check out the part where Taylor and Jonah do the deed in the hostel in Sydney. For Taylor, it's not so much about emotional release as it is about feeling close to another person, even though the physical pain of the act lessens the pleasure. "Everything hurts," she describes, "every single thing including the weight of him […] but I don't want to let go, because tonight I'm not looking for anything more than being part of him" (23.111). She needs connection, and this is her way of getting it.