In Praise of Summer Loving: 20 Sultry Stories

Now and then, for a change, I like to talk about books I didn’t edit, books that don’t even include stories by me. Refreshing, right? I should do this more often. Actually, I do monthly reviews on www.eroticarevealed.com, but I don’t get to choose those books. Here, I can review as I please, and just now, as summer is waning, this anthology edited by Alison Tyler is especially appealing.

If I claimed to love the whole concept of summer loving, it would be only half true. Loving any time is great, but my personal preference is getting all heated up when it’s cold outside. The true half is that I enjoyed this book even more than I expected to from the lineup of terrific writers.

The stories are all short, just four or five pages each. I appreciate the special skill it takes to pack intriguing characters, vividly drawn settings, and the hottest of sex into such a short space, and all of these writers manage it with so much intensity that you’re probably better off reading just one, savoring it, and waiting a while before reading another. I say “probably,” because, well, I didn’t manage to wait.

The variety of characters and scenarios is excellent, something that especially appeals to me. I can’t really choose favorites, but here are four that stick in my mind after the first headlong reading. Teresa Noelle Robert’s “Summer Lightning” evokes the orgasmic power of nature with thunderstorm sex on a beach in Maine; Kathleen Delany Adams’s steamy August night in “Splash” resonates with the buzz of cicadas and with lesbian butch-femme sex; Cheyenne Blue’s poignant “Ireland, Arizona, New England” (the only other lesbian story) shows a vacation house swap going wrong but a new relationship going very, very right; and Tamsin Flowers’s “Summer in December” takes place in Antarctica where Christmas comes in midsummer, but a dip in barely-melted icewater could be fatal without the rapid application of shared body heat. This last one satisfies my love of the unexpected as well as my aforementioned lust for hot sex in cold weather.

Oh, and besides all the varied pleasures the book offers, the entire proceeds go to help the family of writer extraordinaire Sommer Marsden in their fierce battle against cancer.

http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Loving-Alison-Tyler/dp/1500606251/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408584385&sr=1-1&keywords=Summer+Loving+Alison+Tyler