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gothauthor's review
5.0
I received an ARC for an honest review.
An assortment of delicious stories and poems that are sure to please!
As the title suggests, each piece of this collection involves a gruesome death, undying love, or a passionate sexual need. Some contain all three. Each author brought their own voice, their own style to this anthology and though every story contained the same central themes, they were each unique. Some brought tears, some brought a sense of longing, some brought terror, and some brought lust. Every work contained in this collection grasped me firmly and held me, riveted, to the page.
I was captivated from the start, each story and poem leaving me in a dreamy daze of contemplation. I recommend reading it in the dark.
An assortment of delicious stories and poems that are sure to please!
As the title suggests, each piece of this collection involves a gruesome death, undying love, or a passionate sexual need. Some contain all three. Each author brought their own voice, their own style to this anthology and though every story contained the same central themes, they were each unique. Some brought tears, some brought a sense of longing, some brought terror, and some brought lust. Every work contained in this collection grasped me firmly and held me, riveted, to the page.
I was captivated from the start, each story and poem leaving me in a dreamy daze of contemplation. I recommend reading it in the dark.
carleneinspired's review
4.0
I was provided an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Find more of my reviews at Carlene's Corrupted Reads.
I love anthologies, I could read just anthologies forever and probably be happy. I like meeting multiple characters, feeling through poems, and reading the unique voices the authors have. Death Love Lust was so unique when it comes to anthologies though, it's dark romance and I wasn't sure I would love any of it at first, but found myself enjoying every story and poem immensely. More that just death, love, and lust, there are incubus, ghosts, M/M and F/F relationships, grim reapers, and more. The stories were so unique, complete in their own way, and felt distinctly different. I looked at each one with fresh eyes, there was no blending together. I appreciated how the dark stories were mirrored by heartfelt ones, with poetry in between that brought the individual parts of the title into perspective and weaved eternal love through every word. I found myself loving the short stories I would never have reached for on my own, a personal favorite was The Devil's Dozen.
Some of the stories are just pages in lengths, others chapters, but each character is so easy to connect to. As soon as I accepted the odd pairings, and just accepted the tales of death, love and lust, it was easy to read and see from the character's perspective. It made me think a lot more than I expected as well, especially about eternal love, leaving an imprint before you go, and general lust between two when faced with some of the scenarios in the stories. Plus, I don't reach for a lot of supernatural anymore and I am so glad I did with this one, because I really enjoyed reading from the perspective of Death. There's such a wide variety in this and I definitely found myself rereading the poems and the darkly sexy shorts.
Death Love Lust was a really great collection and I felt touched on death, love, and lust all equally. I loved the darker aspect to it, the erotica wasn't nearly as much as I was expecting, and the overall tying factor of eternal love made the stories have so much depth and emotion.
Favorites:
Devil's Dozen
Restless Sinners
Lust
Don't Open Your Eyes
Find more of my reviews at Carlene's Corrupted Reads.
I love anthologies, I could read just anthologies forever and probably be happy. I like meeting multiple characters, feeling through poems, and reading the unique voices the authors have. Death Love Lust was so unique when it comes to anthologies though, it's dark romance and I wasn't sure I would love any of it at first, but found myself enjoying every story and poem immensely. More that just death, love, and lust, there are incubus, ghosts, M/M and F/F relationships, grim reapers, and more. The stories were so unique, complete in their own way, and felt distinctly different. I looked at each one with fresh eyes, there was no blending together. I appreciated how the dark stories were mirrored by heartfelt ones, with poetry in between that brought the individual parts of the title into perspective and weaved eternal love through every word. I found myself loving the short stories I would never have reached for on my own, a personal favorite was The Devil's Dozen.
Some of the stories are just pages in lengths, others chapters, but each character is so easy to connect to. As soon as I accepted the odd pairings, and just accepted the tales of death, love and lust, it was easy to read and see from the character's perspective. It made me think a lot more than I expected as well, especially about eternal love, leaving an imprint before you go, and general lust between two when faced with some of the scenarios in the stories. Plus, I don't reach for a lot of supernatural anymore and I am so glad I did with this one, because I really enjoyed reading from the perspective of Death. There's such a wide variety in this and I definitely found myself rereading the poems and the darkly sexy shorts.
Death Love Lust was a really great collection and I felt touched on death, love, and lust all equally. I loved the darker aspect to it, the erotica wasn't nearly as much as I was expecting, and the overall tying factor of eternal love made the stories have so much depth and emotion.
Favorites:
Devil's Dozen
Restless Sinners
Lust
Don't Open Your Eyes
goodbyepuckpie's review
3.0
Anthology read: updating review as I read so I don't forget individual stories.
Liked Victoria Kinnaird's The Price - it's very clearly a prequel but there's enough information to grasp what happened before and after, and it's well written and engaging.
I wanted to like the Devil's Dozen, because lesbians, hooray, and the last two paragraphs were an excellent spin/twist, but the characters weren't quite convincing, especially in reacting to a whole bunch of death in the start of the story, and I didn't care for how the bodies of either woman were described. (I get what they were aiming for with the line about Marilyn Monroe but golly did it Not Land.)
Patrick Tumblety's Restless Sinners has one hell of an opening, and the aside was kind of awesomely weird/gross, I dug that. This had a kind of Cabin in the Woods-esque vibe, interesting and pretty fucked-up but well crafted. (Didn't love the 'punish the Other Woman too' trope but this was an intriguing enough piece otherwise that I could still enjoy it.)
Iskra Ryder's I'll Be Seeing You was great; solidly composed and clear and engaging; it does a great job with the theme by being entirely self-contained and yet feeling like part of a bigger story in a good way. Well put together, hot and with a hopeful ending.
Emma Michaels and Michael Cross' Until Death We Won't Part was also solid; neat plot and competently written.
About a third of this antho wasn't quite to my taste - some of the other erotica stores were more purple-prose-y than I prefer for sure - but Ryder, Tumblety and Kinnaird were the definite standouts.
Liked Victoria Kinnaird's The Price - it's very clearly a prequel but there's enough information to grasp what happened before and after, and it's well written and engaging.
I wanted to like the Devil's Dozen, because lesbians, hooray, and the last two paragraphs were an excellent spin/twist, but the characters weren't quite convincing, especially in reacting to a whole bunch of death in the start of the story, and I didn't care for how the bodies of either woman were described. (I get what they were aiming for with the line about Marilyn Monroe but golly did it Not Land.)
Patrick Tumblety's Restless Sinners has one hell of an opening, and the aside was kind of awesomely weird/gross, I dug that. This had a kind of Cabin in the Woods-esque vibe, interesting and pretty fucked-up but well crafted. (Didn't love the 'punish the Other Woman too' trope but this was an intriguing enough piece otherwise that I could still enjoy it.)
Iskra Ryder's I'll Be Seeing You was great; solidly composed and clear and engaging; it does a great job with the theme by being entirely self-contained and yet feeling like part of a bigger story in a good way. Well put together, hot and with a hopeful ending.
Emma Michaels and Michael Cross' Until Death We Won't Part was also solid; neat plot and competently written.
About a third of this antho wasn't quite to my taste - some of the other erotica stores were more purple-prose-y than I prefer for sure - but Ryder, Tumblety and Kinnaird were the definite standouts.
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