(Sorry, I read this so long ago I don't remember much about it other than that I thought it was interesting, so gave it three stars on GoodReads)

not really sure what I was expecting from this book but it wasn't the type of book I'd normally read. That said, I did find myself enjoying certain parts and read it all. I just don't know if I loved it. Different.

It's definitely harder to give a star rating to a collection of stories but this one gets a 2.5 (rounded up to 3).

I liked the idea for this, anonymous authors writing erotic stories? Amazing! Except no... none of these were particularly 'erotic' and some barely scratch the surface of romance. A lot of them are overly pretentious and I got bored by the majority of these not being what I expected from the synopsis.
The only ones that I can really remember are:
Asphodel, but that was mostly a story that happened to have a sexual ending, not an erotic story.
Vis a vis 1953 (i think, they all had weird names like that) - Though this only brushed what I thought the entire book would be like.
And our honourable mentions - 'Posseblay' for most irrelevant and probably offensive name that has close to nothing to do with the actual story??
and 'Woman eaten by a shark drawn to gold byzantine ring' gets our award for longest title in the collection.

Generally disappointed, wasn't what I expected or wanted from this book.

Thanks Netgalley, the publishers, and Hillary Jordan + Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, for the arc.

This was an interesting read! It definitely fit the brief and what was described, however I felt there were stark differences in quality between the individual stories. It was great and refreshing to get different perspectives in the different stories, but it felt like a random assortment of stories, rather than a collection.

Would definitely be interested in reading a sequel if there was a little more cohesion!

This is a fantastic collection of stories.

From the introduction we know that the only thing unifying this collection is that they centre sex, but that is not to suggest that they are all traditional romance stories containing sex scenes. Some are what I would call generic, but most are an exploration of what sex can be both for better or worse. There are stories looking at unrequited teenage hormones, self pleasure, infidelity, fantasies, sci-fi settings, some are flash fiction and some a little longer.

As someone interested in how the erotic is depicted in literature - from Anais Nin to Monique Roffey, this has been a fantastic collection to read and I will certainly be looking to add it to my own shelves.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Collins for this free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked the idea behind this and wanted to be invested in this story. However, for me, they were more miss than hit. I don't think the concept worked well enough - or the stories weren't executed to a level which made me want to read more.

Some of them felt a little long-winded, others were too short and confusing. Sadly for me, this one didn't work.

I found this book didn't really add to the erotic fiction genre or show me anything different. Although I know many excellent writers were involved, none of the stories really grabbed me or engaged me.

I really liked the idea of anonymous stories of sex, but the stories were a little hit and miss for me and some were more on the awkward, rather than sexy side of reading.

27 we’ll known authors get the anonymity to write whatever they desire about sex… what a premise!
I absolutely love the idea of this, even though I am definitely not normally one for short stories. As with all anthology type books there will always be some that are for you, and some that are not, and this book definitely had that divide between ones I loved and ones I was just left confused by. But in a way, that makes even more sense when it comes to the topic of sex, what is one persons loves and fantasies, could be seemingly strange or off putting to another.
Overall I think this was a good read and I would recommend to anyone who’s comfortable reading quite explicit descriptions and some very unique takes on what sex could entail.

This was a bit too different in style and story format. However it was refreshing to read something that didn't follow a standard romance/erotic sequence.

This is an interesting concept - writers produce stories anonymously so that they can explore their fantasies without fear of being judged. The book has a wide mix of short stories. Some are a bit crude and hackneyed in the way they describe sex, others are actually well done. Several of them are very good in the way they portray relationships between men and women - Rapunzel for instance gets across a relationship where things feel equal between Rapunzel and her lover, who becomes her husband.
Most of the stories are obviously designed to titilate, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But in several there's also more to the stories than simply sex, and there are some interesting portrayals of relationships and women's role and position in society.

This book was going to be a hit or miss, and unfortunately it was a big miss for me. I liked the idea of ‘anonymous sex’, but found that I got really bored way too early in the book.

I understand that people have different visions of pleasure, but these were way too violent and not appealing at all for me. I was mostly like ‘what is so interesting / good about this?’

The writing style are highly different, which doesn’t make this an easy to read book. I also felt that some of the stories dragged forever, which shouldn’t happen in a story collection.

This book contains different stories regarding sex. I stopped after four of them. They were strange and somewhat confusing. I understand that not every story is the right one for everybody, but I'd put the great ones at the beginning of the book.

This was one of those collections that would, in my view, be really difficult to hit the really high star ratings and that is simply because the diaspora of authors, be it gender, background, ethnicity, genre of writing, class varied spectacularly throughout the book.

There were some stories in there that dragged, I cannot lie, They were not my cup of tea and were a struggle to get through. On the flipside, there were stories I devoured that I wished were whole novels all on their own.

What I loved about this book used that leveller of sex with very little else as a jump point and showcased a true spectrum of human emotion, connection, loss and pain and suffering and joy which was somewhat unexpected and something to savour

I had mixed feelings about this book. A book full of short stories and like the majority of books like these you get a bit of a mixed bag . I must admit some of the stories were ok, others just weren’t for me, I really didn’t enjoy them.

These stories were very hot and miss for me personally. I do like books of short stories and there will always be ones that are more enjoyable than others, but a couple of these didn’t hold my attention and another couple finished so abruptly it felt like they weren’t finished! However, interesting concept!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

27 authors and 27 stories. Some good, some bad, some meh. But overall stories short enough that you never got bored or annoyed

I liked the 'anonymous' element of it, but I couldn't get past just how violent some of these stories were. I know that's some poeple's 'thing' and I'm not here to shame, but it wasn't for me, I think there's better, sexier erotica out there written by authors who aren't so literary and actually focus on the sexy stuff.

Short stories are always going to be a mixed bag. Some were good, some not so good, but that’s what you get with a collection. What differentiates this collection from others is that all the stories are anonymous. That was intriguing and could be interesting if you were familiar enough with the author you could try and figure out which one is which.

I was very intrigued by the concept of this short story collection, but sadly it didn't live up to my expectations.
Some of the stories were ok and some I didn't even bother to finish...

Interesting experiment, but not for me.