Elinor reviews Best Lesbian Erotica 20th Anniversary Edition edited by Sacchi Green

Best Lesbian Erotica 20th Anniversary Edition, edited by Sacchi Green, delivers seventeen creative stories with all the heat you’ve come to expect from the series. It offers everything from a pro Domme feeling more than expected for a hot female client (“A Professional,”) to tryst with a hitchhiker (“Dust”) to werewolf sex (“Hot Blood”). A cop and a jewel thief get it on in a moving subway car in “The Further Adventures of Miss Scarlet.” Doppelgangers switch roles again and again in “Mirror, Mirror.” In “Luscious and Wild,” a kinky young couple enjoys a weekend in a hotel room. A troupe of drag kings pull an audience member on stage for flirtatious attention and she surprises them all with her response in “Easy.”

This edition had a surprising number of musician-themed stories, so if you’re longing for lesbian musician erotica, you should definitely pick this up. Girls form a band, and fall into bed with each other, in Liverpool in the 1960s in “Ascension.” An aging rockstar has a secret, kink-filled relationship with an emerging star and tour mate in “Reunion Tour.” In “Give and Take,” a former up-and-coming musician turned venue tech has a one-night stand with a younger up-and-comer.

In addition to “Ascension,” this anthology has a few other stories set in the past. “The Royalty Underground” shows two young British women meeting and having sex in a crowded tube station-turned-shelter during a World War II air raid. In “Grindhouse,” a burlesque dancer in 1950s New York dabbles in kinky female-only films and gets exactly what she wants from her co-star after the cameras stop rolling.

My favorite story was probably “Tomato Bondage.” In this, the only story about long-term partners, a pair of farmers–and switches–get creative with outdoor bondage. I appreciated the practicality of these inventive heroines, and that the sex in the story seemed to benefit as much from the couple’s bond as from their originality. I also really liked “Make Them Shine,” in which a fat femme dominant gets her boots shined, and more, by a genderqueer sub. The descriptions in this story were rich and evocative, and I loved the narrator.

There were a few stories that weren’t my cup of tea, though they might be yours. In fairness, I’m in the first trimester of pregnancy right now (yay!) and I know my distaste for “Smorgasbord,” in which a food artist and a food writer indulge in a sexual and artistic food-filled romp, was due in part to the all-day morning sickness I’ve been experiencing for weeks. Descriptions of all sorts of culinary delights smeared on somebody’s body are a lot less appealing after weeks of unrelenting queasiness and I couldn’t judge this story fairly. I’ve also been hormonally emotional, and the grief of “Tears from Heaven’s” narrator over her recently deceased dog, lost due to absentmindness on the part of her younger lover, made it more weepy than erotic for me. Similarly, the infidelity-themed “The Road to Hell,” which begins and ends with the narrator lying to her partner of two decades, bummed me out tremendously. All of these are perfectly fine stories if they sound appealing to you.

My only real complaint is that I would have liked more diversity in this anthology. Only two stories appeared to explicitly feature people of color, no one seemed to have a disability of any kind, and nearly all of the stories were about sex with new partners. I especially like erotica that features long-term couples who still have a sex life along with a domestic one and there wasn’t much of that here. That’s my bias and I know not everyone is looking for that.

There were a lot of interesting scenarios, though. There was plenty of hot sex ranging from vanilla to kinky, many different voices and styles, and many sexy characters. I highly recommend it.