Red Hot Erotica - erotic fiction by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Sally Albright

Red Hot Erotica is a collection of 19 short stories, loosely based around the theme of “heat.” While the writing was far better than the little bit of erotic fiction that I’ve read (mostly of the “Letters to Penthouse” ilk), it was, for the most part, not as good as most “regular” fiction I enjoy. Still, the writing was rarely bad enough to be distracting, and I’d say generally ranged from average to quite good.

I truly loved only a handful of the pieces, although plenty of them were hot enough to get me at least a little excited. They represent a fair variety of erotic fantasies and sexual orientations, although the vast majority are heterosexual, and it seems to be heavy on the BDSM themes. But in addition, you’ll find some good exhibition/voyeur stuff, some chicks with dicks, one guy-on-guy story, and even a golden shower for those who are so inclined.

The one thing I really didn’t like about the book was not knowing what I was getting before I started each story. OK, to be fair, I had a good sense of what I’d be reading when I got to “Star Spangled Spanking,” but titles like “String Bikini” and “Jolene” left me wondering. This was particularly off-putting when reading the stories aloud with my husband because we were looking for fairly specific themes, and it took us a few stops and starts to find something we liked. The one thing that those Letters to Penthouse have going for them is their descriptive titles…nothing says someone’s gettin’ it up the ass like “For His Thirtieth Birthday, He Got it Up the Ass,” right?

Once or twice I couldn’t immediately identify the gender of the narrator. While that could be a fun literary device if the purpose of the story is that you don’t ever find out and are allowed to use your imagination, it was very distracting to realize halfway through that I had guessed wrong.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to others. I don’t think it’s going to find a permanent home in my nightstand or anything, but I’m not headed off to sell it on eBay either.