Stripped Down: Lesbian Sex Stories - book discontinued by Cleis Press Inc. - review by animepanda89

This anthology contains stories by twenty-six different authors, each of whom have their own unique style. I have not read any other works by any of the contributing authors. One of the great things about this many authors is the variety of styles that are shown which make for a well-rounded collection.

The collection is edited by Tristan Taormino who is a well known author who has published several books as well as acting as the editor for several other erotica anthologies for Cleis Press.

The book is broken up into twenty-six different stories ranging from five to nineteen pages each. The stories follow a fairly high variety of situations. The variety of stories and features will appeal to a large audience. Inside the reader will find tales of bondage, role swapping, experimentation, self-exploration, true love, and a sci-fi story about how someone is literally willing to change everything to get what she wants.

There is a good mix of character types including many different ages and races of characters, there is also one story about a trans woman and his girlfriend. One thing that I noticed is that several of the stories seemed to focus on more butch women so packing and strap-on sex is a common occurrence. With the variety of stories the book contains a little something for everyone no matter what they are into.

Due to the number of stories I am not going to talk about each one but here are summaries for a few along with my opinion on them:

In Quinn Vertiz's Jubilee, a young butch has her first experience with with a prostitute who makes sure it is a night she will never forget. It is interesting to see the young woman overcome her self doubt and discover who she really is as she comes to terms with her butch lifestyle.

In Kathleen Warnock's After Lunch, young doctor Rebecca realizes that maybe moving to the suburbs is worth it after meeting small-town waitress Babe. The was one of my favorite stories in the book, the writing is very good and the characters are very believable, you actually get a feel for what they are like.

In Radclyffe's Clinical Trial, grad student Robbie becomes the subject of a research project led by a beautiful doctor. This story has an interesting concept of a young woman volunteering for a psychological experiment that leads to some climatic results.

In Gina Bern's Besame, Sera finds out that fate will bring people together after feeling a connection to a painting causing her to contact the artist. This story features more of the emotional aspect at first, it is interesting to see how the instant connection between the two women is shown even though they are in different countries and have never met in person.

In Catherine Lundoff's Planet 10, an alien woman is willing to give up everything about herself in order to sleep with a member of another race that she has been lusting after for years. This is an interesting sci-fi story that has a creative writing style. The fact that the characters are not very human-like was a bit strange to me though.

In Skian McGuire's Phoebe's Undercover Bon Voyage a young cop is given a taste of a different type of justice as her friends throw her a going away party she will never forget. I would consider this to be the hottest story in the book, you get bondage, a cop fetish, flogging, and an interesting group of characters.

With ViolyntFemme's Gone, the anthology take a step away from the erotic and instead goes for the emotional with the story of one women struggling to come to terms with the loss of her wife. The story was by far the most powerful in the book, instead of centering on the sex it instead focuses on the emotional connection that the main character felt towards her wife. In my opinion it is the best written and is the most touching, you can't help but mourn with the main character for her loss all of which is done in five pages.

In addition to the seven stories listed there are nineteen others that cover a bit of everything. Due to the very large number of authors the writing styles are greatly varied, some are "meh" at best where others are beautifully written. This anthology is a good investment since it has a great variety of stories and themes. It would be a good choice for the lesbian reader or anyone who enjoys lesbian erotica.

Another great feature is the length of the stories, due to the varying page lengths it is easy to pick the book up and just read one or two stories if you only have a few minutes.

The book features a glossy soft cover and is the size of a standard hardback. The binding is not the greatest, after my first read-through I noticed that the binding was peeling a bit inside both the front and back cover, I read this book while lounging and when I was not reading it was sitting flat on my bedside table so I know I was not rough with it. This makes me think that the book would not hold up to heavy use.

The book itself is printed on heavyweight paper with a very easy to read spacing and font. The font size is just about perfect and the print is very clean. The quality of the pages makes up for the binding.

The cover art is of two sets of intertwined legs with the title above them in fairly large letters. While the cover matched the tone of the book quite well it does make it very indiscreet, there is no fooling anyone about what the book is.

First off let me say that I am a straight woman who is not aroused by lesbian erotica. I received this book as an assignment and I tried to give a fair review even though the stories don't light my fire so to say.

This anthology does a good job of mixing different stories but it seems to have a leaning towards more butch women. I would have preferred a few more femme driven stories since things started to get a bit repetitive after awhile. I did like the inclusion of a trans character since that is not as common in a collection like this.