A review by randi_jo
Anonymous Sex by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Hillary Jordan
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
1.5
Trying to figure out how to articulate my feelings on this collection. The first words that come to mind are: "deceiving", "underwhelming", and "people were right about it being overwhelmingly heterosexual".
To extrapolate a bit on each...
"Deceiving" because the blurb for this book and the introduction by the editors made it sound like this book was going to have erotic stories. They really talked up sex, sexuality, and desire as well as how the stories included so many kinds of sex! Gay sex, fictional sex, elder sex!! Wow! That's not what we got in this book. Very few stories actually had erotica in them, maybe 4 or 5 max. Despite having the advertised collection theme as "Sex & Desire" there was almost no cohesion to the collection? I'm unsure how this is possible but Anonymous Sex managed it by, I guess, accepting every story that mentioned a penis. The story themes vary from actual erotica, thoughts on sexuality, sexual empowerment, stream-of-consciousness pieces that briefly mention sex positions, all the way to children hitting puberty.
"Underwhelming" because a large number of these stories were either obviously rushed or they ruined themselves by being plain. Were there kinks in this book? I can think of 2 stories in the entire book that featured some kind of kink, and only 1 of the stories made me go 'oh shit what the fuck' and that was Holo Boy with its. Making an anonymous collection made it sound like people would write about their most fucked up sexual encounters, or maybe kinks they want to explore without people being @ing them and calling them perverts or something. Instead we just got a bunch of pretentious highbrow 'literature' that sometimes involved a penis being mentioned (no there was not a single story, even the lesbian ones, that did not have a penis involved - sorry).
"Heterosexual" because there are 27 stories, only 2 of them feature at least 1 lesbian (neither actually feature gay sex), 1 features a gay boy (there is no sex in this one), and 1 is fantasy-themed where MC becomes a hermaphrodite. These aren't really good odds and I don't know why it was boasted about in the introduction that these stories were so sexuality varied. It's like bragging about having the token gay friend, or something.
Despite all that, I do wanna give points to the stories I liked, which were "One Day in the Life of Josephine Bellanote Munro", which seems to be in consensus with other readers, "The Next Eleven Minutes", "What the Hands Remember", "I Don't Miss You", and "Pearl River". Is this book worth buying for the 4-6 decent stories? No.
"Love Doll" and "The Great Artist" are currently in a no-holds barred match on which is more disgusting and pissed me off lol.
TLDR; authors go anonymous and the majority decide they wanna be as pretentious as possible about sex/sex adjacent topics and the editors apparently thought that was a great idea then lied about the stories all being sexy and erotic.
To extrapolate a bit on each...
"Deceiving" because the blurb for this book and the introduction by the editors made it sound like this book was going to have erotic stories. They really talked up sex, sexuality, and desire as well as how the stories included so many kinds of sex! Gay sex, fictional sex, elder sex!! Wow! That's not what we got in this book. Very few stories actually had erotica in them, maybe 4 or 5 max. Despite having the advertised collection theme as "Sex & Desire" there was almost no cohesion to the collection? I'm unsure how this is possible but Anonymous Sex managed it by, I guess, accepting every story that mentioned a penis. The story themes vary from actual erotica, thoughts on sexuality, sexual empowerment, stream-of-consciousness pieces that briefly mention sex positions, all the way to children hitting puberty.
"Underwhelming" because a large number of these stories were either obviously rushed or they ruined themselves by being plain. Were there kinks in this book? I can think of 2 stories in the entire book that featured some kind of kink, and only 1 of the stories made me go 'oh shit what the fuck' and that was Holo Boy with its
Spoiler
armpit licking"Heterosexual" because there are 27 stories, only 2 of them feature at least 1 lesbian (neither actually feature gay sex), 1 features a gay boy (there is no sex in this one), and 1 is fantasy-themed where MC becomes a hermaphrodite. These aren't really good odds and I don't know why it was boasted about in the introduction that these stories were so sexuality varied. It's like bragging about having the token gay friend, or something.
Despite all that, I do wanna give points to the stories I liked, which were "One Day in the Life of Josephine Bellanote Munro", which seems to be in consensus with other readers, "The Next Eleven Minutes", "What the Hands Remember", "I Don't Miss You", and "Pearl River". Is this book worth buying for the 4-6 decent stories? No.
"Love Doll" and "The Great Artist" are currently in a no-holds barred match on which is more disgusting and pissed me off lol.
TLDR; authors go anonymous and the majority decide they wanna be as pretentious as possible about sex/sex adjacent topics and the editors apparently thought that was a great idea then lied about the stories all being sexy and erotic.