Love Is the Crooked Thing features a number of social issues that some may consider provocative and others may find troubling.

Chief among them is the physical relationship between the seventeen-year-old protagonist and her thirty-three-year-old partner. Although Rita contends that "No two people on earth were ever more right for each other" and the couple's personalities seem to mesh, the fact remains that there is a substantial age difference between them.

When Mrs. Formica threatens Arnold with statutory rape charges, it is not an outlandish accusation—particularly since the affair began when Rita was sixteen. Though Arnold is depicted as rather naive for his age and Rita shows a maturity above her years, readers may still be unsettled by Arnold's patronizing behavior ("be a good girl and listen," he admonishes at one point) during a love scene. The content of the sex scenes itself is...