Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 0
boobs: 5
bombs: 0
bondage: 4
blasphemy: 0
Stars: 4
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

I finished this a while ago, I'm not sure why I didn't get a review done sooner. I got a recommendation for the book from a friend on GR and after checking out the synopsis I got a copy. This is a hot little bit of smut, the plot is character driven so it doesn't read like a litany of sexual gymnastics. The characters don't grow very much; it's a short story and there isn't much time for the characters to arc. Their relationships are changed by the end of the story though which is what I expect for this sort of thing. As erotica goes, this is certainly better than most of the swill out there.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 5
bombs: 2
bondage: 1
blasphemy: 2
Stars: 3
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: PASS

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

This book started off with a scene of explicit depravity that would make Ed Lee proud, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I was hooked right away and that's what carried me through the rest of the book. After that, it became a romance complete with InstaLove and some steamy lesbian sex between the Older Wiser Stronger Emotionally-Unavailable longtime lesbian MC and the Younger Enthusiastic Softer Idealistic Never-Been-With-A-Woman-Before co-MC. It's a bog-standard romance, dressed up in an implausible zombie scenario - in fact, all of the worldbuilding was one big "WTF?!?!". The romance - well, if you're at all familiar with the genre there will be absolutely no surprises here for you. The last two thirds of the book featured predictable plot and character development punctuated a few times by sex. I kept hoping for more of the horrific depravity the book started off with but it never happened again. In a sense, it feels like a bit of false advertising, but OTOH I've met my annual quota for romance.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 0
boobs: 5
bombs: 0
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 2
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: PASS

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

If more erotica was written with as much insight, creativity and commmand of the language as Vanessa has, I'd read a lot more erotica. This collection of ten stories (all of them new to me; I don't believe any of them are in any of her other collections) is another set of knockout stories. Even the weakest amongst them are worth reading. The real standouts for me are Trebarthen Cottage, which blends the fantastical into the real seamlessly as Vanessa does in so many of her stories. The Shower Game by far the longest story in the collection, watches 2 relationships evolve around a mutual appreciation for voyeurism, and the story is handled quite deftly.

This collection doesn't really go into any of the taboo kinks that some of Vanessa's stories do, so this would be an excellent collection for the discerning reader looking for some top shelf, witty and well written vanilla erotica.