Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

Kink: Stories by R.O. Kwon, Garth Greenwell

27 reviews

writingbookscoffee's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I LOVED some of these stories and some I was just not that into and skipped through. I did find some writers I need to check out more from and of course learned about some kinks. I would definitely recommend this book to someone who wants to read about diverse sexual experiences.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Transphobia, and Blood

travelseatsreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

According to to the blurb 'Kink' is an anthology of literary short fiction based on love, desire, BDSM, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision. This book is brimming with heavy hitting well known and accomplished authors so I was really excitied to read something fresh and enthralling. Unfortunately in this case the more well known authors sections were the ones that fell flat and lacked development. Yes, they look at various aspects within the kink world. However, disappointingly, do so at a very basic and dare I say it vanilla level. 

There are some absolute gems there and I particularly enjoyed the pieces by Carmen Maria Machado, Brandon Taylor, Larissa Pham, Peter Mounford and R.O. Kwon. Overall this is a decent read, however I feel would have been much improved by showcasing perhaps lesser known authors who have a deeper understanding of the world and how to convey it rather than just going with the well known heavy hitters.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Transphobia, Violence, and Blood

invaderlinz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

3.5

I enjoyed almost every story but the last, some more than others - as is the way with a lot of short story collections. I think it’s a solid collection, but not as out there as I had expected from all of its hype. I did really love reading these stories from authors I’ve found over the past few years, and seeing them write in a totally different way. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Homophobia, Infidelity, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Deadnaming and Incest

hybridpubscout's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Gore, Rape, Self harm, Sexual content, Transphobia, Violence, and Excrement

lovelyandmorbid's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

3.0

 All of these stories are very well written but they didn't really fit the theme. Most of the stories were only tangentially kinky and basically all of them were sad or melancholic? Pretty much every story had characters that were unsatisfied either emotionally or sexually and because they were short stories, that feeling never really resolves. Or worse, they center violence. One had a rape scene, several others had gore and death.

I rolled my eyes at the idea of "literary fiction writers writing about kink" because erotica and romance very lively genres that do kink perfectly well but the one rule in romance is happy endings and I don't think any of these stories were happy. Overall, it felt more like a sexual horror collection. The writing had this book comfortably at a 4 stars for most of the reading experience but by the end, I kind of felt, like, what is the point? Kink wasn't even centered in lots of the stories, and when it was, it wasn't really in a positive light. While I liked many of the stories, this collection felt unnecessary by the end. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Hate crime, Rape, and Transphobia

bookwormymegan's review against another edition

challenging reflective tense slow-paced

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship

Moderate: Deadnaming, Racism, Rape, Sexism, and Transphobia

caseythereader's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Deadnaming, Drug use, Gore, Incest, Self harm, Sexual assault, Transphobia, Xenophobia, and Blood