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.

Some of the stories in Best Lesbian Erotica 2015 are among the best erotic writing I’ve read. Whether or not you’re a big erotica fan, there are stories in this anthology that so well written that they warrant a read because of how well they show nuanced lesbian relationships. Some of these authors took big swings and came up with exciting, original tales. Stories like, “The Last Last Time,” “Second Date,” and “Behrouz Gets Lucky” show us a diverse cast of queer people dating and falling in and out of love in ways that feel true and meaningful, as well as offering some hot sex. “Andro Angel” gives us a sexy, anonymous threesome, while in “A Knock at the Door” the two women write erotica together via email, imagining the encounter that they’ve yet to have. Because of the skill of these writers, even stories I would not have chosen based on their description turned out to be gems, particularly Tina Horn’s “Wet Dirt.” In another example, I found the love interest in “Learning to Cook” incredibly unappealing but the story so good that by the end I’d lost all my resistance.

This collection takes us to other times and places too. “Lovely Lady Liberty” is a delightful romp in the middle of World War II. “Arachne” reimagines a Greek myth as erotica with surprisingly great results. “The Bullwhip and the Bull Rider” seems like it’s from another time, though it’s not explicitly, and it actually made the rodeo sound sexy–a compliment that should be taken seriously since I grew up in small-town Idaho and the memory of rodeos, with their hay-and-manure smells, still makes my nose twitch.

There’s a wide range of characters and sexual expression in this book. There’s plenty of kinky and vanilla adventures alike, and characters of many races, gender presentations, and different ages. With authors like Sacchi Green, Xan West, Miel Rose, BD Swain and many, many others, there is a ton to savor in this collection.

That being said, this anthology felt uneven. Rarely will anyone like every story in an anthology, but the high quality writing in the best pieces made the less polished stories a let down. Some, like “Late Show,” tried to pack in way too much relationship angst and sudden commitment in a short erotica piece. “Girlz in the Mist,” on the other hand, presented an intriguing premise but the sex scene read like a blase recitation of acts without desire or pleasure, with a narrator who is “tolerating her own violation.” Despite an interesting set up at an all-female bath house, ultimately it reminded me of the bland girl-on-girl erotica you find written for a male audience. Worse was “Kristie’s Game,” in which a rough consensual hook up between strangers turns disturbing when one woman physically overpowers the other and threatens to penetrate her while the physically weaker woman says “no” repeatedly. The reader is told she’s afraid, but the sex scene doesn’t stop and in the end we’re told this behavior is a habit for the stronger woman. I felt incredibly frustrated because this story could have been consensual with a brief conversation early in the hookup to determine safe words, providing a clear line between playing with power and actual fear of rape. There was no need to include the threat of rape, which it should go without saying I do not expect from the erotica I read. This story also had a notable spelling mistake and a few very clunky phrases, giving the impression that it had not been edited.

I do recommend this book, but please skip “Kristie’s Game.” It’s unfortunate that this is included in an otherwise great, if not flawless, erotica anthology.