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mnboyer's review
3.0
Anthologies are always hard to rate because (1) you've likely seen at least a handful of the selections printed elsewhere if you're a huge fan of a genre and (2) there are always at least one or two pieces in an anthology that, for lack of a better word, suck--bringing the entire anthology down. This is the case with Violet Blue's 2013 anthology of "Best Women's Erotica."
There are several short stories that got my heart racing and were a quick, fun, steamy read. However, there were also several that did absolutely nothing for me. That makes this just an average anthology. I was able to get this through the public library so I didn't mind that I found some of the stories to be "bleh" and so you shouldn't feel guilty about skipping a section if it doesn't interest you. I would not, however, have appreciated this had I paid for it. A majority of these short stories were published elsewhere -- why not create a brand new anthology instead of repeating things posted/printed elsewhere?? I challenge editors to instead put out a call for new short stories, get new things published (which will be more interesting to me since I will not have previously encountered them!) rather than reprinting things.
There are several short stories that got my heart racing and were a quick, fun, steamy read. However, there were also several that did absolutely nothing for me. That makes this just an average anthology. I was able to get this through the public library so I didn't mind that I found some of the stories to be "bleh" and so you shouldn't feel guilty about skipping a section if it doesn't interest you. I would not, however, have appreciated this had I paid for it. A majority of these short stories were published elsewhere -- why not create a brand new anthology instead of repeating things posted/printed elsewhere?? I challenge editors to instead put out a call for new short stories, get new things published (which will be more interesting to me since I will not have previously encountered them!) rather than reprinting things.
avoryfaucette's review
3.0
Pop quiz: what, exactly, is women's erotica? This is a question I always have to ask myself when I see these "best of" anthologies.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a bit of a bias against the editor, Violet Blue. What I've heard from her just rubs me the wrong way in terms of gender, sexuality, and other things. But I was willing to give her collection a shot, and I found myself pleasantly surprised. From her introduction, it's obvious that Blue wanted to capitalize on this past year's Fifty Shades craze and focus on explicit sex aimed at women. The stories she chose are just that, and refreshingly well-written. The language can get a bit romance novel-y at times, but there's a clear message from Blue's curation that "erotica for women" has as many meanings as there are female readers. There's a mix of kinky and vanilla, and though most of the pairings are straight, there are a couple of lesbian stories included. One features a trans woman, which was awesome to see. I even got some guilty jollies from stories that might not seem to comply with my gender politics, such as Serafine Laveaux's "Road Crew Cock." The last story did make me desperately hope that the author is a person of color, and I was disappointed in a piece about a secret college spanking society that went from gender subversion to slut-shaming, but on the whole I would recommend the collection to women and other readers alike.
This review was originally published on the Sex Positive Activism blog and now appears at Queer & Now.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a bit of a bias against the editor, Violet Blue. What I've heard from her just rubs me the wrong way in terms of gender, sexuality, and other things. But I was willing to give her collection a shot, and I found myself pleasantly surprised. From her introduction, it's obvious that Blue wanted to capitalize on this past year's Fifty Shades craze and focus on explicit sex aimed at women. The stories she chose are just that, and refreshingly well-written. The language can get a bit romance novel-y at times, but there's a clear message from Blue's curation that "erotica for women" has as many meanings as there are female readers. There's a mix of kinky and vanilla, and though most of the pairings are straight, there are a couple of lesbian stories included. One features a trans woman, which was awesome to see. I even got some guilty jollies from stories that might not seem to comply with my gender politics, such as Serafine Laveaux's "Road Crew Cock." The last story did make me desperately hope that the author is a person of color, and I was disappointed in a piece about a secret college spanking society that went from gender subversion to slut-shaming, but on the whole I would recommend the collection to women and other readers alike.
This review was originally published on the Sex Positive Activism blog and now appears at Queer & Now.
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