Toward the end of 2021, I spent an afternoon perusing numerous “Most Anticipated Books for 2022” lists. One of those lists happened to include Anonymous Sex, a collection of 27 erotic stories by 27 authors. The list of authors featured are given to the reader, but none are attributed to any specific story. Hence the choice in title! An added piece of the fun is to try and identify which author wrote which spicy story!

I was especially interested after seeing authors like Tea Obreht and Louise Erdrich as participants in this project. Not to mention the many other published, award-winning authors included. As romance is among the genres I rarely read but hope to explore more this year, I thought it would be a fascinating opportunity to go even further out of my comfort zone and support this collection’s editors, Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, in their effort to push back against the taboo of erotica and prove it deserves a proper place in literary fiction.

It took me over a month to finish the collection, but that is because this is a book you want to savor, reading a few stories at a time. To give you just a taste of what this collection incorporates, stories range from realism to science fiction, from ghost sex to virtual sex, from queer sex to straight sex, from married couples to flings long gone. I was especially impressed by how current events like COVID or the publication of this very collection itself found their way into these stories. My personal favorites include (but are not limited to): arousing encounters on planes, a Rapunzel fairy tale retelling, the history of a woman’s sex life told Benjamin-Button style, and a cowboy-esque romp on a train with an outlaw. And, yes, these are just the tip of the iceberg!!

Not only does the anonymity in this collection make a great guessing game for readers, but I think it allowed the authors more agency to experiment or write about a topic they may have been hesitant to put to paper with their names attached. It also gives them the chance to write in a different genre, from a different perspective, or in a different time period than what may be expected of their usual work. I have 100% zero regrets in buying this book, and I highly recommend you support this collection and get a copy ASAP!