Sweetest Kiss - erotic book by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Jul!a

The Sweetest Kiss features 19 stories from 19 different authors, all put together by D.L. King. All 19 authors; Remittance Girl, Thomas S. Roche, Anna Black, Lisette Ashton, Sommer Marsden, Kathleen Bradean, Amber Hipple, Teresa Noelle Roberts, G.B. Kensington, Ciara Finn, Maxim Jakubowski, Madeleine Oh, Evan Mora, Andrea Dale, Michelle Belanger, Lisabet Sarai, Nikki Magennis, Kristina Wright, and A.D.R. Forte, all have short paragraph long bios in the back of the book. D.L. King has an extended paragraph for a bio, not quite a full half page, but longer than the authors.

The stories in this book are all vampire related. Some follow the traditional "my vampire is a sex pot that can't go out in daylight" deal, and others get a little more informal. While they're all very well written, not all of them succeed at lighting a pants fire that desperately needs attention.

Midnight at Sheremetyevo is one of the stories some might find a little less exciting. Rather than reading like an erotic story, it reads more like a story that happened to also include sex; taking us on a short journey with a female vampire returning from a business trip and meeting a young man who just can't resist her. Turns out she can't resist him either, and she ends up paying for it.

The Communion of Blood and Semen will speak to the romantics out there. A man meets a woman on Craigslist while in town for business. They hole up in a hotel for a few days, but something is a little off about her. He can see her sadness, but can't figure out why she's sad. Eventually he pieces everything together and decides that he will be the one to make her happy again.

Most of the stories feature male vampires with human females, with a few exceptions. There are a few homosexual interactions, but for the most part, all the sex was between a man and a woman, or some pairing thereof. The stories all focus on the sex, and the human being fed from being more than just a meal, which was nice. Another really nice thing is that each story is wildly different from the last, leaving you with a well rounded bunch of stories rather than "oh, a woman walking home in the dark gets attached by Dracula and he makes her his forever."

Your basic paperback book, 8"x5 1/2". The cover is actually fairly discreet. If it didn't say "ravishing vampire erotica" on the front cover and the spine, one might never know. And you have to look to really see those because they blend in so well with the rest of the cover. This one is one you can read in public without having to worry too much about people seeing anything you don't want them to because it really does look like "just another vampire book."

I love vampire stories. I also love sex stories. So I was really excited when I finally got around to buying this book. Then I read about half of it, and was a little disappointed. After finishing the book, my initial thoughts stayed the same.

I really did enjoy reading each story. I felt as though I could easily lose myself in a longer version of each one, and that doesn't happen very often. But while I enjoyed reading each story, I didn't find many of them to really be all that arousing. I can't really place my finger on why they weren't, I just know that they seemed to be a bit lacking in that area. Passing the book onto my husband, he read a few stories and felt pretty much the same way.

Overall, I feel this book would be more suited to those who enjoy reading vampire stories, particularly ones that happen to contain sex, rather than somebody looking for a book of short erotic stories.