Sinclair Sexsmith reviews Sunstone by Stjepan Sejic

Sunstone Vol 1

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

Kinky lesbian literature is hard to find. So when I hear of one that I haven’t read, and it has a good review or five, or a solid recommendation from a friend, I snap it up.

That’s how I found Sunstone by Stjepan Sejic, who is a Croatian comic book writer and artist, known for many different comic series. Sunstone happens to be the one where dominant-inclined Ally and submissive-inclined Lisa meet online and decide to get together in person, and we follow their sexcapades, their relationship, their falling in love, and their group of friends.

It was, though beautifully drawn, disappointing. Maybe if I wasn’t a nonbinary queer who has been kinky for 25 years and active in the leather and kink communities for 20, I would find this more relatable. It wasn’t that the information was wrong, it just felt like a very superficial sense of what kink is, and mostly just hung sexy kink illustrations around a weak story.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the author, just the title, when I ordered it, but a few chapters into it, I said to my partner, “I think this was written by a man.” And that was the other piece … though the story features two women as main characters and focuses on their sex and kink life together, it all reads as though it is for a male gaze. Both characters have ex-boyfriends, who feature prominently in the story and both sexualize them and think they are somehow responsible for their hotness, and there is just no context of lesbian community, identity, development, connection, lineage, or anything. It’s more like these two women live in a completely heterosexual world and just happen to find themselves compatible and together. In the beginning, they even have their relationship set up where they refer to each other as their “best friend” and think how great it is that her best friend can scratch that D/s itch that she has really wanted to be satiated and explored.

There was some representation of kink culture and community, but it was quite foreign to me — it didn’t feel like anything I’ve seen or witnessed; it read more like a fantasy of a kink community. And while that’s good and fine (for example, I did enjoy The Marketplace series by Laura Antoniou, which is absolutely a fantasy kink world), it just wasn’t clear to me if this was supposed to be a fantasy, or if this is what the author really thinks happen at kink clubs or in kinky lesbian bedrooms.

I also wonder about the cultural differences. I’m not sure English was Sejic’s first language, and sometimes I wonder if part of my critique is because it was in translation and that some of the cultural context didn’t transfer. Or, that coming from a United States leather community context, I just didn’t connect with it because he is referencing other kinds of communities in other places. So it’s possible that the things Lisa and Ally struggle with will still connect with readers, if perhaps you are beginning your journey into BDSM, and there are many sweet moments between them, and dozens of pages of smoldering hot illustrations.

Perhaps I expected too much of Sunstone — and perhaps I expect too much of queer, trans, and kinky literature in general — when I want it to be rooted in some sort of queer community or kink community. Or perhaps I am too self-centered, that I expect the queer and kink communities in books to be communities that I recognize. But either way, I was disappointed in the male gaze in this comic, but still enjoyed the beauty (and fetish) of it very much.

Susan reviews Eve and Eve by Nagashiro Rouge

Eve and Eve by Nagashiro Rouge

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

I believe the entire summary I gave of Eve and Eve on GoodReads was “This is the level of weird horniness I usually find in m/m manga and I almost respect it for that.” The actual summary is that Eve and Eve is Nagashiro Rouge’s single-creator anthology of f/f manga, and this is honestly a first for me! I usually have an easier time finding anthologies like this of m/m manga! … But I am seriously not kidding about it being weird and horny. The stories are mostly scifi, but there are a couple of slice of life stories, and the tones range from serious to incredibly silly. The art is mostly fine, but I have two major quibbles with it. The first is that the anatomy is notably out of proportion, especially when it comes to hands – I’m not saying that there’s panels where characters have hands about the same size as their eyes, but it’s close. The other is that all of the characters have invisible vulvas (presumably as the distaff counterpart to invisible cocks, a known hazard of m/m manga), so the sex scenes are dangerously close to mashing Barbies together.

I Want to Leave Behind a Miraculous Love — I am unbearably amused by Nagashiro Rouge cramming every single possible apocalypse scenario into one page. When I first read Eve and Eve in 2019, that was just a funny joke, but here we are in 2021 and I’m just like “Yeah, actually, that sounds right.” As for the story itself: two women in Japan who barely share a common language fall in love after at least five apocalypses, which they are the only survivors of! I found it quite odd, tonally! The motivations of Sayu, the POV character, confuse the daylights out of me, because she is specifically pre-occupied with having children with Nika so that whoever dies first isn’t leaving the other alone with no record of their relationship. I appreciate that this is the thin veil of causality that’s excusing the sex scenes, but the specific fixation on having kids instead of any other form of record-keeping or looking for other survivors baffled me.

(If you’re wondering what the pay-off is for that narrative thread, I’m just going to tell you that one of the apocalypses involved technologically advanced aliens leaving their human-creating tech behind, and you can fill in the rest. Just know that the invisible vulva aspect is especially egregious here.)

I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of stories where people fall in love because they’ve got no other options, and between the language barrier and Sayu’s point of view so I felt like we don’t get much about Nika at all. So I Want to Leave Behind a Miraculous Love wasn’t necessarily bad but I really wanted more build up of the relationship than it had space for in a short story.

The Case of Eko and Lisa — Eko creates erotic manga and uses her sexbot, Lisa, exclusively as a model and art assistant, much to Lisa’s dismay. The story pretty much follows your expectations for a romance between a human and a robot, especially one where the robot is the instigating partner. Lisa’s cheerful pursuit and reaction to rejection is what I’d expected, but Eko’s profound discomfort with the idea of sex that involves more than one person (both in her work and in her own life) was honestly the thing that made this story stand out for me! She’s not put off by the idea of having sex with a robot, but she hates the idea of sex without emotion behind it, and that got me right in my grey-ace feelings. The Case of Eko and Lisa isn’t doing anything I haven’t seen before in terms of robot/human relationships, but for the most part it’s fun and I enjoy how done Eko is with everything, so it’s worth a look! … Although the visual distinction between humans and robots literally just being one seam line at the neck feels like such a cop-out.

Top or Bottom? The Showdown! — Okay, so much about the premise of this story was going against it; it’s school girls who move on from arguing about their RPS shipping of boys in their class (one of my squicks) to arguing about who in their group of friends would be a top or bottom (which I am done with as a fandom argument, because I did my time on this back in the 00s!) However, the end result is mostly cute and silly, and gets a little meta with the two main characters trying to fluster each other with the tropiest moves from romance manga, so I came away really fond of it!

An Infidelity Revisited — Two women who cheated on their high school boyfriends with each other meet up again as adults… And immediately cheat on their girlfriends with each other. The glimpse of the messy relationship the two main characters have is interesting, especially when one pushes back on any attempt to make it less messy. I would have really liked more of that aspect, although the level and drama and ambiguity is pretty solid.

[Caution warnings: infidelity]

Heir to the Curse — A web designer returns to her home village to see her childhood best friend announce her marriage – only to discover that her (cis) best friend has inherited a family curse that all women in her family must marry and impregnate a woman, regardless of their own feelings on the matter.

Oh boy, where to start with this one.

Okay, so, first off, there are parts of the relationship between the two protagonists that are really sweet at the start and the end, where they’re shown as loving and supportive and able to have fun together. Those bits are cute! I like how much they care about each other! But one of them is being held prisoner by her own family (grim), who drug the protagonist so that the love interest can rape and impregnate her (also grim), until they confess their love and have consensual sex as a follow-up. The shift from rape to a romantic relationship is in line with some of the genre conventions, but the nature of it being a short story rather than a series means that the switch feels really sudden and highlights how the problem could have been solved by them talking to each other. … I would also like more explanation of the origin story of this curse, because I feel like there were a couple steps that got missed out in the initial explanation, and in why the family continued the tradition! An explanation is suggested in the final panel, but it’s a bit slight. Heir to the Curse could have been my thing, but I’m very tired of stories where “Well it’s okay apart from the rape scene” is a valid response.

[Caution warnings: imprisonment, homophobia, drugging, rape, magic pregnancy]

Eternity 1 and 2: Eve and Eve — A loving couple decide that the best way to immortalise their love is to… Become a living akashic record… By becoming the heart of a pair of satellites…? Look, I told you this was weird scifi, I have no explanations for you. It circles back around to the theme that I Want to Leave Behind a Miraculous Love suggests; leaving a record of yourself so the future knows that you were there and you were loved! Eternity 1 and 2 giving up their human lives and bonds specifically to lock their bond to each other in place is such a different answer to the one Sayu thinks of in the first story. I think I enjoyed it, but I will say that it has one of the most unnerving two-page spreads I’ve seen in a comic in quite a while. I promise, you will know it when you see it.

[Caution warnings: suicide]

Eve and Eve: Epilogue — One of the things I liked about Eve and Eve was the way that the stories interweaved. Between Eternity 1 and 2 spying on the relationships from other stories, or Sayu and Nika finding newspaper articles about the satellites, it gives the anthology a sense of unity despite the vastly different tones, settings, and storylines. This epilogue rounds that out really well, and I appreciated that it has the characters considering a similar dilemma to Eternity 1 and 2, and making a different choice.

[Caution warnings: implied suicide]

… So you see why my summary is that Eve and Eve is a weird anthology. It wasn’t my thing overall, but I think at least half the stories are worth a look – and I had a lot of fun overthinking its narrative structure, so it was worth the price of entry for that alone!

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found as a contributing editor for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business, or a reviewing for SFF Reviews and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. She brings the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Rachel reviews The Night Off by Meghan O’Brien

The Night Off by Meghan O’Brien Amazon Affiliate Link

I’m always on the hunt for good, well-rounded, lesbian erotica and I was so thrilled to find Meghan O’Brien’s novels from Bold Strokes Books. I started with The Sex Therapist Next Door (2018) and really enjoyed it, but The Night Off (2012) was such a fun read that I felt I had to review it. Although this one is from a few years ago, I definitely want to underscore that I often struggle to find lesbian erotica that I find enjoyable (that’s also written by and for queer people) and everything I’ve read so far by O’Brien has been great.

The novel is told from the dual perspective of Emily Parker and Nat Swayne (having two narrators is common for O’Brien). Emily works at a law firm while raising her college-aged little sister. Born into a life of chaos and raised by drug-addicted parents, Emily relies on control, order, and responsibility to dictate her busy life. She’s so used to caring for her sister and dismissing her own wants or needs that when she books a night off with an escort agency, she goes all out, crafting her ultimate fantasy. Nat Swayne, Emily’s high-priced escort, both loves her job and excels at it in almost every way. For Nat, numbered among the benefits of working as an escort is never having to become emotionally involved. However, things change when Nat meets Emily, and both of their highly cultivated boundaries are crossed, but not without complications.

This was a really fun read! With erotica, it’s definitely exciting to read a book that’s both sexy and well-rounded. These characters (Emily and Nat, but the other secondary characters as well) are thoroughly developed, with issues and biases and fears that they struggle to get over throughout the book. The pacing was also strong, with a logical sequence of events that didn’t take away from the erotic elements. I was totally captivated by these characters and this plot and I felt as though this had all the right elements of erotic fiction. The book wasn’t overdone, it wasn’t unbelievable or wooden, and I felt like it thoughtfully treated some of the more painful issues that were brought up. The Night Off was genuinely fun and refreshing to read.

This book is the perfect combination of character and conflict. It absolutely is a staple of the genre, and it’s main focus is the erotic plot, but to me, it doesn’t cut corners on the story itself and I think The Night Off is really worth picking up if you’re looking for this kind of book.

Please visit Meghan O’Brien on Twitter or on her Website, and put The Night Off on your TBR on Goodreads.

Content Warnings: Shame, discussions of addiction.

Rachel Friars is a creative writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every queer novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history.

You can find Rachel on Twitter @MsBookishBeauty or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

Sinclair reviews The Solstice Gift by Avery Cassell 

The Solstice Gift by Avery Cassell

The Solstice Gift by Avery Cassell is a queer love story in the best sense of the words. It doesn’t follow the traditional, heterosexual tropes of how the two characters meet and following them through their courtship, but comes in with the love story well under way, and continues with new and radical sexcapades that bring the couple closer together, exploring identity, gender, sex, kink, and love in the process.

The couple, Behruz and Lucky (who you might already know from Cassell’s full-length novel Behruz Gets Lucky, reviewed on the Lesbrary by Anna), are older, both butch, very much in to all kinds of kinky fuckery, and come up with a new way to celebrate winter solstice: with a threesome. What starts as a one-off lark becomes an annual tradition, and becomes elaborate in its ritual and execution.

As a queer, kinky person myself, I loved Cassell’s descriptions of the negotiations, both from a non monogamous and a kink perspective. Cassell clearly knows about the genders, sexualities, open relationship philosophies, and kinks in this book. I love the elaborate references to queer and literary culture — many of which I didn’t understand, but I still like how that adds richness to the prose and feels like a conversational with queer and literary history. 

I love reading a queer book with characters who are older, and with a couple who are both butches. Despite more and more representation, graphic sexuality for folks who are over 40 is still rare, and butch/butch desire is not nearly as common as many other gender combinations. I also appreciate how easefully they navigate the openness of their relationship. The book doesn’t go into the envy, jealousy, or insecurities that can come up for open relationships, but I didn’t really miss that content. It just felt like it was more of a queer kinky fairy tale than a real-life depiction of what navigating threesomes is like (I don’t know about you, but in my experience, they are often sexually frustrating, feel incomplete, and end up with someone feeling left out). And sometimes, frankly, I just want the fairy tale version — I want everyone excited to be there, getting off, communicating with exquisite precision, and generally having a gay ol’ time. 

It’s a quick read, just over 100 pages, which makes it light enough to zoom through but still full of content and characters that have stayed with me. When I picked up the book again to make notes for this review, I caught myself just turning the pages, jumping in to yet another year’s solstice gift story, since it was so easy to pick it up again from any point and be hooked into the story. 

The Solstice Gift was the winner of the 2020 Pauline Reage Novel Award from the National Leather Association International.

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 8, Leroy King and the Triple Daddies  (2017): 

Picking the Solstice Gift for 2017 turned out to be easy-peasy. That was the year that our ancient Subaru Forester, Ruby Tuesday, finally shuddered to a halt and nearly went into the Subaru graveyard in the sky, but we decided to put in a last-ditch effort to get it repaired. The owners of the shop we’d been going to, Gay’s Gearhead NoHo Car Repair, had retired, so we asked around for a new mechanic. The consensus was that King’s Automobile Services was the cat’s meow. King’s Automobile Services’ slogan was “King’s: Where queens are kings, kings are queens, and service reigns!”, and they were known for a series of peppy commercials that featured the owner, a dapper stud named Leroy King. Leroy looked to be in her mid-50s, had greying dreadlocks, a fondness for wearing a forest green bandanna as a neckerchief, ironed grey mechanic’s overalls with “King’s” embroidered in curly red script across her chest, deep-set dark eyes behind retro black eyeglasses, and a sparkling gold labrys inlaid in one of her front teeth.

Of course, we had other contenders, but Lucky and I were totally crushed out on Leroy and the others faded into the background like distant stars to Leroy, a luminous full moon. Yeah, we had it bad and this is how it went down.

Read the rest of the excerpt over on Avery Cassell’s site here.

Maybe it’s a little early to start thinking about your own solstice gifts, but if you know some queers who like books, kinky sex, ethical non-monogamy, and queer literary references, this will be a great treat. 

Buy it directly from Avery Cassell at their Etsy store (and pick up an embroidered bandana while you’re there, too).

Sheila Laroque reviews Laid Bare by Astrid Ohletz and Jae

Laid Bare by Astrid Ohletz and Jae

With everything going on, Laid Bare gave me everything I was looking for and more. I don’t typically read or listen to erotica, but with this collection it was a perfect type of escape that I was looking forward to with each new story. I enjoyed the short story format, as well as listening to it in audiobook format. The stories about solo fun stood out to me in this time; and the other stories and fantasies were also a pleasure to listen to. I think it is important to still find moments of sexy joy, and this book was a great way to explore erotica as a genre with.

Alice Pate reviews Choices by Tessa Vidal

Choices by Tessa Vidal

Choices is fairly true to the stereotypes of its genre. As an erotic romance, its sex scenes are plentiful, overdramatic, and unrealistic. Unfortunately, it seems that these criticisms can be extended to the entire story.

Choices is a love story between the movie star, Caro Ballad and the celebrity dog trainer, Shell Tate. Both women had their start in a trailer park in Mississippi and managed to find their way to glamorous Los Angeles where they reconnected over Caro’s new adopted dog, Dickens.

Fame has always been a difficult writing subject, because so few people have actually experienced it. Tessa Vidal has fallen victim to writing about a subject she has little experience with and the result is a celebrity character who is just… boring. The movie star life is an attractive subject, but it takes a special touch to pull it off.

In general, I had a hard time getting invested in the romance. Perhaps my own personal bias against celebrity lifestyles and the world of dog breeding and dog shows, but I’m a little more likely to blame the uninspiring romance scenes. There was no tension or build-up to the relationship, and the tiny conflict the author tried to insert was too easy to overcome.

To risk a pun, this entire story was anticlimactic. Tessa Vidal included a side-story to run parallel the main couple. It follows Ryder, Shell’s twin brother, who is on the run from the FBI, and it’s hinted that he’s involved in something incredibly dangerous. This side plot was a nice rush of action for when the romantic plot fell flat, but in the end there was no big exciting peak to Ryder’s story.

Likewise, there’s a scene where Caro is being blackmailed by a private detective about her not-so-glamorous past, and this is never revisited. Caro claims she won’t pay him the money he demands to buy his silence. But he still has a hold of this information on her that she tries to keep covered up. Loose ends like this tend to point to rushed drafts and a lack of editing, and it could have potentially livened up the story where it dragged.

Overall, I was fairly unimpressed with Choices. The author has since released a few more erotica titles that appear to be set in the same creative universe, but I doubt I’ll ever pick them up.

Mary reviews The Princess and the Evil Queen by Lola Andrews

The Princess and the Evil Queen by Lola Andrews (affiliate link)

Princess Snow White and the Evil Queen (Harlow) have been at war for years. Harlow might have been married to Snow’s father, but he died shortly after they were married, and the two women are very similar in age. Growing up, they had something of a friendship, but that changed over time, and their paths diverged into darkness. Now, Harlow suggests a truce to the war that would require Snow to live with her and at the end of it make a choice that would change everything.

This an erotic romance novel with a twist on a classic fairy tale that was interesting and enjoyable to read. Snow is more independent in this and is out on the front lines of the war with her husband Prince Charles. What I really loved about her character, though, was her resolve to continuously be compassionate and understanding. She isn’t hardened by her dark past with Harlow or the war: she remains kind.

Harlow, on the other hand, is hardened, but understandably so. The story delves into her past: how she got her powers and to be the queen in the first place. She has many secrets that she struggles with, along with the trauma of her past. I like that the story doesn’t shy away from the darker parts of her or try to excuse her actions when they’re wrong. She has to make right what she’s done, not only for Snow, or her kingdom, but for herself.

The romance was a lot of fun and never felt like my excitement died down while reading this. It helps to know the fairy tale beforehand and come into it knowing that Snow and Harlow were at least somewhat close before the war, because things do pick up rather quickly. Having said that, I never felt like it moved too fast. I could definitely tell these two were old friends in some way, and the chemistry sparked so easily between them that their interactions felt natural.

The world building and the magic were also great. While the story changes the narrative, it still felt like a fairy tale, and without giving too much away, the way the magic mirror works was a really interesting twist.

Overall, I loved this retelling of Snow White and recommend it to anyone looking for a fun and erotic romance story.

Danika reviews Mistletoe Mishap by Siri Caldwell

I went into this fully expecting it to be lesbian Christmas erotica–which would have been fine, as a fun, quick read! Instead, Mistletoe Mishap has a lot more nuance that I expected. Viv and Kendra are married, and their sex life has fizzled out a bit. Kendra is trying to reintroduce sex to the relationship, and they begin to negotiate their physical relationship. I appreciated that this acknowledges that it’s easy to fall into a rut in a relationship, and that it can even be a bit awkward to try to regain it. Although they have been together a long time, Kendra is still insecure about whether Viv has anywhere near the same sexual drive towards her as she has towards Viv.

It’s also nice to have a romance between two women who are not teens or twenty-somethings. They’re middle-aged women, and they’re both mature, as well as being settled into their professions. They’re both scientists! And professors. It’s not discussed a lot, but there’s an undercurrent to the plot about being semi-closeted and how that affects their relationship. Through this little bet for who can make each other have the most orgasms, there are also subtle shifts in their relationship outside their sex life, including how much they hide their relationship while out in public (especially at the university they teach at).

In fact, despite the premise, I would call this more of a romance. There are sex scenes, but they aren’t as much the focus as their relationship in general is. If you’re in the mood for a short, holiday-themed read that has sex scenes, but also some nuance around negotiating an established relationship, I think this is well worth the read!


Megan G reviews Cinnamon Blade: Knife in Shining Armour by Shira Glassman

Cinnamon Blade keeps having to rescue Soledad Castillo, and with each rescue her attraction to the woman grows. Once she finally finds an appropriate setting to ask her out, things start to get crazy. Or, really, crazier.

As soon as I saw that Cinnamon Blade: Knife in Shining Armor was a sort-of follow up to Knit One, Girl Two, I knew I had to read it. Although it’s not really a sequel, “Cinnamon Blade” is set within the fake fandom discussed in Knit One, Girl Two, and is an absolute delight! An interracial wlw relationship between a bisexual Jewish superhero, and her latinx questioning damsel-in-distress? What more could you want?

One thing Shira Glassman is amazing at is casually including deep, feminist social commentaries in her works without making it seem preachy. The characters are simply having a conversation, and it comes up naturally and honestly. It’s so refreshing to see things like antisemitism and biphobia discussed so casually. It never feels forced, just part of every day life. Which it is! Somehow, she manages to create incredibly realistic situations within a supernatural, completely unrealistic world (where attacks by aliens and vampires? Are a regular occurrence).

Cinnamon Blade and Soledad Castillo have a wonderful relationship. Cinnamon is completely aware of the power imbalance inherent in their relationship and works hard to make things feel equal between them. She refuses to ask Soledad out after she rescues her, feeling it would be placing the woman in an unfair position. Once she manages to ask her out in a neutral environment, she continues to foster an equal relationship between them, making it clear that she does not want Soledad to ever feel that she “owes” her anything.

Also, this is one of the few stories I’ve read that include two women in a relationship openly talking about their sexual desires and fantasies. Both Cinnamon Blade and Soledad are unabashedly sexually attracted to each other, and their honest discussion about it leads to several scorching sex scenes, made all the hotter by their communication.

A couple of warnings for this story: there is a small moment of mild sexual harassment by a male character who never resurfaces. There is also a little bit of violence, and some gore, all typical of the sci-fi superhero setting. Also, as I already mentioned, there are explicit (hot, hot, hot) sex scenes sprinkled throughout the story, so if graphic sexual content isn’t your thing, this may not be the book for you.

Overall, Cinnamon Blade is a fun and sexy adventure, full of open and honest discussion, and a couple that will have you itching for more. A must-read.

Megan G reviews “Wet Nails” by Shira Glassman

Adina Greenberg is taking a small break from her life as a grad student to spend a night watching movies starring her biggest Hollywood crush: Rose Hamilton. Rose Hamilton was a star in the 1950’s, and is definitely dead. Yet, she somehow also manages to step right out of Adina’s television set and into her living room.

The words “ghost” and “erotica” are not words I would often think to put together, and yet somehow, they work perfectly in this adorable and sexy short story.

Part of this, I think, is because “Wet Nails” doesn’t read like a traditional short story. Instead of being terrified by the ghostly apparition of her dead celebrity crush, Adina seems excited and nervous. In fact, the first thing she thinks when Rose Hamilton begins to climb out of her TV is how thankful she is that she just recently showered. At no point does Adina show any fear at the situation, which, while a little odd considering the circumstances, does work to help the “erotica” side of this ghost erotica along.

Another thing, I think, is that Rose Hamilton is not a vengeful ghost, seeking retribution over the horrible things that happened to her in her life. Instead, she claims she is kept alive by her fans, and because of that can occasionally drop in to visit some of them and thank them for their dedication to her.

Something I really enjoyed about this story was Adina and Rose talking about their different experiences with bisexuality. Adina is quite open about liking women – in fact, she shows a clear preference towards women. Rose is open as well, but makes it clear that she was not that open during her life. Any romantic interactions she had with women had to be hushed up, hidden, as they could have ruined not only her career, but her life. Adina, in turn, seems fully aware of the privilege she has in being able to be out and accepted, knowing that it wasn’t always like this and, for some people, still isn’t.

I won’t get too detailed about the “erotica” aspect of this story, but I do promise that it is hot, hot, hot. And yet, somehow also manages to keep that little bit of adorable that has been sprinkled through the entire story.

Overall, “Wet Nails” is a fantastic little story that looks at the different experiences women can have with queerness (bisexuality in particular, in this story), and how despite that, they can still find common ground, even if they are from entirely different generations. They form a sweet, albeit brief friendship, which obviously turns into a little bit more in a way that works perfectly even though one of the women is a ghost. I would highly recommend this story to anybody who is looking for something both sweet and sexy. Shira Glassman will not disappoint.