After a frustrating, busy week, I decided to relax with Best Lesbian Erotica 2012. It definitely put me in a better mood – the collection starts off strong with Amy Butcher’s ‘Touched’. I’m a sucker for a schoolgirl, so this little vignette was a delight. As a whole, Best Lesbian Erotica offers more hits than misses, although for me personally it went downhill after D.L. King’s ‘On My Honor’, one of the sexiest, most enjoyable stories in the book. I didn’t care for the stories that were written in second-person narrative – to be quite honest, I find it more difficult to get into the story with second-person perspective. Of all the stories, I thought that ‘Touched’, ‘Rebel Girl’, ‘Blood Lust’, ‘Maid For You’, and ‘On My Honor’ really shone. ‘How He Likes It’ I could have done without; it seemed too far removed from lesbian erotica to actually be lesbian erotica – without the details, I could have just been reading a straight S&M story. Queer erotica, yes – lesbian erotica, not so much? All in all, I think there is something for everyone inBest Lesbian Erotica 2012 – a little romance, a little S&M, a little uniform play, and a lot of great authors and great, hot sex writing.
Thanks for the review, Danika. It was a tough job,I’m sure, but someone had to do it. 😉 I look forward to reading the book, but will be watchful for ‘How He Likes It’. Just the title makes me skeptical. I did not see who the publisher was. Did I miss it?
Seriously, thanks for letting us know what is good, and what we can skim over. Much appreciated.
Thanks Danika.
Karen, the publisher is Cleis Press, who produces Best Lesbian Erotica annually. I’m the guest editor this year. “How He Likes It” is a story about a trans male top and his genderqueer submissive, who switches from boy to girl in the middle of a scene. I included it especially because I think “lesbian” is seen as a fairly limitive term these days, and may folks who identify as lesbian also date, sleep with, or experiment with various genders and identities, including trans and genderqueer folks. I’d love to see more trans and genderqueer representations in lesbian erotica in general—though I do recognize that it’s not “lesbian”, in the strictest sense. I guess I just think that the limitations of “lesbian” are expanding, or maybe I’m just hoping so, as we continue to play with various post-identity labels.
Regardless, thanks for the review! Karen, I hope you enjoy it.
Personally, one of the things I like about the label “lesbian” is that it is a social label that is so flexible. Of course, that also means that various people can have their own definitions of what does and doesn’t count as lesbian, but still.