Never Have the Same Sex Twice - erotic book by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Kayla

"Never Have the Same Sex Twice" is a Cleis Press book written by Alison Tyler. The entire book's "theme" is to give sex advice while making it sexy by providing excerpts from erotica stories. The book is a softcover book with black and white pages on the inside. The book has 202 pages divided into 17 chapters and 17 full-length erotica stories. The book's format is the traditional Cleis Press erotica format; it's easy to read and includes all of the information in a well-organized table of contents. The book was published 2008, so all of the information is modern and up-to-date.

I'm confused as to what to consider this. The description makes it sound like it's a sex-life-help book mixed in with some short stories of erotica. The book itself? Mostly erotica with a couple paragraphs of self-life-help. I'm not sure what I was expecting. Maybe I was thinking that there's be mostly sex-help text with some blockquoted erotica thrown in? Maybe I was expecting a chapter of sex-help followed by a chapter of erotica? Either way, that's not at all what I received.

This book is set up pretty simply. Each chapter includes about a paragraph of introductory text and says the point of the chapter. From there, the chapter basically goes "And you could enjoy it like this...." and quotes a couple paragraphs from an erotic story. It continues with "Or you could enjoy it like this..." and quotes another couple paragraphs from a different erotic story. The chapter then ends with another paragraph that wraps up the things that she's suggesting you do. After each chapter is a full-length erotic story that exemplifies the points that the chapter was trying to make. So basically, in each chapter, you get three paragraphs of advice/sex-help - tops. You do get quite a bit of excerpts from random erotica stories though.

I much preferred the full-length stories to the short excerpts included in the chapters though. While it's neat to have a way to easily show specific aspects of an erotic story, it just isn't nearly as erotic without all the details. I found that I wasn't finding any of the excerpts really all that erotic. I will say that Alison Tyler did a great job of trying to include just enough detail in the excerpts to make it erotic and to try and explain what was going on in the story without letting the excerpt get too long.

The sex advice? I wasn't fond of that either. It's pretty basic stuff. It's stuff that you can (honestly) read in Cosmo. It's things like "have sex in a car", "have sex outside the bedroom", "use anticipation to your advantage" and things like that. It's all pretty basic stuff. Alison basically relates each lesson to how it's helped her own life in every chapter which is neat to see.

The stories are all stories that have (mostly, I think) been published in other Cleis Press novels. I've read quite a few erotica novels from Cleis Press (over 30 as a low estimate), and I only recognized some of the excerpts and only a couple full-length stories. Alison Tyler does include some of her own stories in here as well. The stories always mix well with the chapter before it, and they are written by a variety of authors and include a variety of situations. All of them (if I remember correctly) are between heterosexual couples in monogamous relationships though. Some include some kink, some include sex on the kitchen table, and some just include some regular sex.

It was neat to get such a personal look at Alison Tyler. I've read quite a few of her erotica anthologies, but none of the books really portrayed Alison in such a down-to-Earth manner as this one. She talks about her own sex life in many of the sex advice paragraphs, and she talks about how her and her boyfriend (who she references by name) manage to keep their sex life exciting. She comes off as a normal woman who just happens to work hard at keeping her sex life exciting. It was neat to see her so laid-back.

I think the book needed different direction to be a better read. It either needed to have more sex advice and less erotica, or it needed to be a full erotica book. Maybe erotica that was all "themed" to improving the character's sex lives or something. I feel like the mixture of the two of them together was a bit awkward, and I'm sad to have to give it 3 stars. Maybe I'm so used to reading sex-help and erotica book as two separate things that I don't seem them working together. Either way, I am looking forward to other's reviews on this book.