Kink: Stories by R.O. Kwon

Kink: Stories Reviews

• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  I dunno. If I'm being honest it feels like all the cool kids got together to prove they were better than everyone else and then weren't?
  
  The stories are... fine. In my years of reading for the Over the Rainbow Booklist, I definitely encountered better - the problem with doing this in short story form is that you can either develop the story and characters or the activities and most of these stories do the latter. I've always felt including sex, even kink, should tell us something other than that they aren't vanilla marshmallows - all I get is an overwhelming sense of earnestness.
• 
  Petra loves Miami art everywhere instead of trees

  Update Yes well,it's all gone wrong, as you can probably tell from my name. I'm too enraged and so hurt right now. And I've read two more stories. The fourth one, about going to a dominatrix, but from the 'intellectual' point of view was the most interesting.
  __________
  
  Stories 1 & 2. *Warning. TMI coming up, don't read if you want to think of me as an intellectual bookseller who never even wears push-up bras!!!*
  The first story, "The Cure" was lesbian goes with old boyfriend. Not exciting or interesting.
  The second one, "Best Friendster Date Ever". This was a gay guy's encounter with a man he did not know, very bdsm, lots of tying up and humiliation, full details of penetration etc. I got some really good ideas for the road trip with Richie next week tomorrow as I feel like being a domme for a change. Blow his.... mind!
  
  Mr. B aka Bill, the bf, is not going to enjoy reading this gay story, and since he is only just getting back into sex and relationships after a five year hiatus due to his wife's suicide, I think it might be a bit early to play such advanced games.
  __________
  
  This was a Valentine's present from my bf, Mr B. He wants us to read it together!
  
  I had an amazing Valentine's Day. Mr B. turned up in a nice suit (he wears baggy professor clothes mostly being as he is a law professor), with a huge orchid - 3'5" tall, and a Valentine's card that said "Want to know how I really feel about you?" Opened it has fireworks with loads of colour-changing lights that play in time with the 1812 Overture. A hand drawn childish thing of a heart with an arrow that made me smile, and this
  Kink: Stories for us to read together!
  
  Then we had a lovely dinner in Fratelli Milano and when we came home I changed into a
  hooker dress (that exact one) with fishnet stockings and stuff men like and that was his present. Oh and an aerosol of almond cream. He doesn't do dairy as he has Multiple Sclerosis and it's not on his list of foods to eat. I ordered strudel for dessert, and he scooped out most of the fruit and ate that leaving me the pastry and icecream, suited us both. Later he had the aerosol almond cream, that 'went down' rather well! ;-)
  
  I also bought him cologne and a nice shirt, one that fit and wouldn't be too baggy. He is tall, broad-shouldered and slim and wears these awful law-professor clothes, including a shirt he inherited from his father which was old when his father died ten years ago, he needs a style upgrade.
  
  Also a car upgrade. It isn't a 20 year old Toyota Camry but similar. No more Porsches, Ferraris or Aston Martins for me. Sadly. I'd make to with a new 'Vette though, not snobby, I like the lines of a well-designed sports car and the symmetry of their engines. Also the noise. I like noisemakers, I'm a small boy at heart that way.
  
  When we met during Covid I thought this guy is so hot, he'd never be interested in me so I said, let's just be friends and we chatted for six months for hours and hours on the phone every week, now for a couple of months it's not friends any more ;-)
  
  It isn't a monogamous relationship, and I don't know if it will go anywhere. Mr. B's wife, a nationally-syndicated journalist drowned herself five years ago and he and his daughters aged 21 and 23 now are still somewhat shell-shocked. One has become a recluse. The other is finishing school in New York and decided to only do voluntary work the rest of her life. As they both inherited a lot of money, they can do as they please, but being a voluntary shut-in is a terrible choice.
  
  I know that Mr. B sees and probably sleeps with another woman once a week if so often. Why am I so damn upset about the fact he is going to see her on Saturday night when I am going away on a road trip to Key West with Richie (from last year whom I have never got over and wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but he is serially unfaithful, a commitment phobe and adorable) and he's going to rent a sports car cos he knows I love them.
  
  I was thinking we all have our addictions - are mine men, or is it I can't find the right one, or the right one hasn't found me or there are no men who would ever find me 'right'? Tbh it's looking the last one is true but kind of hard to admit that.
  
  Well that was a big preamble to reading this Kink book. I'm going to try and rate/review each story as I read them.
• 
  Emily B

  Despite the long list of impressive authors contributing to this book and the provocative subject matter, I was left disappointed. Unfortunately this wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted to be shocked and intrigued and maybe even disgusted but I just wasn't.
  As always some stories were better than others and I think my favourite was
  Chris Kraus's and
  Carmen Maria Machado's was definitely interesting. The others didn't stand out to me and almost blended together.
• 
  Esther Espeland

  Wow this was such a slog I can’t believe how bored I was by this! This felt so much like someone from the “cool kids club” of current famous writers was like what if I try writing a story that’s a little bit “bad boy” and we put them all together, except all of the stories are exactly the same!! There was maybe one I liked, but now I can’t even remember which bc they all ran together. Because! ever depiction of kink was exactly the same. Supposedly for celebrating like the diversity of kink every single story was about literally only BDSM and being pushed to your limits and psychological revelations etc etc. no changes to tone or content! Like what abt a story about joyful furries! Or sensitive leather daddies! Or like foot fetishes or puppy play or idk even like balloon popping or being sexually attracted to famous monuments, I feel like there is such a vast array of different kinks and between all these writers, many of whom I respect, they just hit the same note over and over again, which is like “I’m scared by how much my docile girlfriend likes getting slapped in the face during sex” booooring wow clearly I am passionate about this but this was such a let down!!! Also some other of these stories were def just porn but bad porn bc these authors arent even professional smut writers just like “dabbling” to be a lil “dangerous” I guess. Honestly it’s been a minute since I’ve read something I hated so it’s good to get a reminder of what that’s like
• 
  Meike

  Greenwell and Kwon have teamed up to give us a short story collection with a clear mission: "Instead of pathologizing kink, the stories in this anthology treat it as a complex, psychologically rich act of communication." While there are of course some weaker and some stronger stories in this 15 piece collection, the majority is captivating and impressive, also the pieces by lesser known authors - and I confess: I have initially been drawn to the book by the big names that feature as contributors.
  
  There is
  Carmen Maria Machado who writes about a Victorian-era sex theater ("The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror" - what a title!); there is
  Brandon Taylor who gives us a story about a student sex worker who spends his summers with rich married couples; there is
  Alexander Chee who writes about a grindr-like date that ends in sex and power play; there is
  Roxane Gay who, surprisingly, has added one of the weaker pieces in this collection; there is
  R.O. Kwon who writes about a married couple that consults a dominatrix - plus I was really looking forward to reading the piece by the wonderful
  Garth Greenwell himself, only to find out that it's a standout chapter from
  Cleanness. Granted, "Gospodar" is so great that I immediatley recognized it although I've read the novel quite a while ago, but I already knew the story, and that was a let-down.
  
  The anthology also introduced me to writers I didn't know before, but whose work here I found intriguing, like
  Kim Fu (whose story plays with fear and being observed) and
  Peter Mountford (who writes about a couple who enjoys BDSM - hello,
  Leona Stahlmann's "Der Defekt"). There are some lesser stories that are slightly overblown or too on-the-nose, but all in all, this is a pretty great collection that contemplates desire and physical communication - and as the main character in Chee's story states: "It's good to be wary of people who are afraid of what they desire."
• 
  Jo (The Book Geek)

  So, THIS was kink?
  
  Well, I've read kinkier.
  
  I was definitely in the wrong place here, as I was expecting a mouth watering, tantalising and even a slightly disgusting collection of stories about people that enjoy and deliberately seek out, kinky sex. Unfortunately, I honestly felt like the sex involved was mostly not consented to, and riddled with abuse. That is not how I roll.
  
  I wanted a foot fetish or two, some bondage, a little role play and to top it off, a good nylon fetish. Who doesn't love nylons? You cannot put a bit of clit rubbing on every other page, and expect it to be kinky. You need to set the scene, you know, cause the reader to feel the heat.
  
  Some of this felt uncomfortable, and definitely not in a good way. Some of the stories barely involved any kink/sex at all, and this isn't what I came for. I also got the vibe that being kinky is somehow embarrassing, so I found that to be confusing. I thought this book existed to celebrate kink?
  
  To be frank, this was a book about bad sex, and I wouldn't recommend it.
• 
  Rachel

  Like most anthologies,
  Kink: Stories was a mixed bag, though it's certainly enjoyable for its novelty alone (its thesis being that erotica has a place in literary fiction). I found the preponderance of stories about BDSM started to get a little boring after a while, but this was otherwise a refreshing collection that I enjoyed spending time with.
  
  I felt the stories that were the most successful were the ones that contextualized the characters’ kinks—I don’t mean that in a ‘every kink comes from a fucked up childhood’ kind of way; I mean that your life and your sex life are part of the same whole and some of these stories were more interested in interrogating that intersection than others. 
  
  The two absolute stand-outs were Brandon Taylor's Oh, Youth (tender, devastating) and Carmen Maria Machado's The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror (weird, sensual)--incidentally the two longest stories in the collection. The other surprising highlight for me was Trust by Larissa Pham, an author I'd never heard of, whose Vermont-set story I found evocative and effectively moving. 
  
  The less said about Roxane Gay's Reach the better, and a handful of other stories fell flat too, mostly the ones that lacked interiority of any kind. You could tell that a lot of these authors wanted to forgo character and dive straight into Commentary About Desire, and I always found that much less effective.
  
  (Also, anyone looking forward to new Garth Greenwell should know that his story, Gospodar, is a chapter taken straight from Cleanness--I ended up skipping it when I realized I recognized what I was reading as I hadn't particularly enjoyed that chapter the first time.)
  
  Bottom line is that it's honestly worth the price of admission for Taylor and Machado, but otherwise it didn't totally reach its promising potential.
  
  Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.
• 
  Elyse Walters

  Audiobook....narrated by a full cast of readers.
  
  “You can’t get enough of what you don’t need”
  
  Love, sex, desire, unfulfilled desires, fantasies, BDSM, dungeons, bondage, cuffs, ropes, riding crops, dominatrix, submissive, attraction, personal satisfaction, insatiable hunger, disappointments, empowerment, shame, masturbation, penetration, orgasm, voyeurism, hooking up, dating, lesbian sex, couple exploration, safe words, truth, trust....
  
  “Kink” explores ‘kinky sex’ ....
  
  These anthologies are tastefully done, well written, not particularly erotic...(a little they are), but rather a serious look at the unlimited boundaries and possibilities of sex—both psychologically and physically.
  
  One of the most interesting, ‘ tell-all’ aspects of this collection....
  is the contributors themselves—
  These skillful, literary respected authors couldn’t have written these stories if they didn’t believe that ‘kink’ was a worthy topic of our language-descriptive words....(erotic/ dirty words)... communication...an exploration of language both overt and covert....
  our reactive emotions... eroticism at its core...
  our complicated varied experiences... our relationships—and the importance to understanding ourselves.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Victoria Haddow

  Disclaimer- I have only read 60% of this book. That was enough.
  I received this book from Netgalley but hadn’t read it until an article by one of the editors appeared in The Guardian on 9th February 2021. I am saddened and honestly disturbed by how much it fails to deliver on the editors’ promises. The book is advertised as an antidote to romance novels and/or erotic novels that portray characters with kinks as mentally ill and unsafe, but more than one story features clear boundary-breaking and decidedly unsafe, non-consensual acts. I’m not talking about consensual non-consent, I’m talking about a man begging and struggling while his hookup tries to force him to have unwanted unprotected sex. In another story, a woman with unexplained physical scars tenses up and doesn’t speak to her partner for days after they perform oral sex on her- the partner knows she “hates” it, but continues because the woman “didn’t use her safeword”. That’s still not ok! Other stories are just...bleak. A guy spends his summer living with an older couple and having sex in exchange for money and career advancement; the wife throws him out when she thinks her husband is falling in love with him. A couple go away for a weekend, argue over food, and will probably break up when they get home. The story where a weedy white guy worships a Black trans woman felt like something R Crumb would draw on a cum-stained napkin. The editor claims that they wanted to represent kink beyond the 50 Shades billionaire/virgin dynamic. One story features the line “I proposed to her after a free jazz concert”, proving you don’t need to be a billionaire to be a pretentious piece of shit. There are queer couples in this book, but the only kinks that are represented are standard Dom/sub. There’s a lot of spitting directly into someone else’s mouth- it happens in 6 or 7 of the stories I read, so if that’s your kink, you might be happy here.
  Maybe I’ve been spoiled by kink anthologies like
  Smut Peddler, queer anthologies like All Out, queer, kinky comics like Sunstone and queer, kinky novels like A Seditious Affair. But this book reads like a token attempt by a literary publisher to appeal to people who say they hate stereotypes but are turned on by the same. The plots are depressing, the prose is sparse, the kink is minimal. Avoid.
• 
  Hannah

  The second I heard about this anthology, I knew I needed to read it. The subject matter is right up my alley and the list of contributors is just incredible. The book did not disappoint in the slightest. Of course, when it comes to anthologies there will always be stories that work better for me than others but I genuinely thought all of these stories did something interesting.
  
  The biggest surprise was Trust by Larissa Pham which I found emotionally resonant and super well-written – by an author I had not heard of before and whose other work I cannot wait to check out. Not surprising in the least was that I liked Carmen Maria Machado’s story The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror – because I genuinely do not think she could write a bad story if she tried. That she made me enjoy a historical fiction story speaks for itself. My absolute favourite of the bunch, however, was Brandon Taylor’s Oh, Youth. This story was pitch-perfect and heart-breaking and impeccably paced. It made me even more excited for his upcoming collection if that is at all possible.
  
  Content warning: death of a loved one, death of a pet, insomnia, suicidal idolation, divorce
  
  I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
• 
  Darryl Suite

  FINAL REVIEW: I believe that the initial mini-review I gave on Goodreads was incorrect. This is what i had said: “Is it just me or do most of these stories not fit into the introduction's criteria? I think most of the stories are quite strong, but the introduction is what makes them feel like they're a letdown. Judge them on their own and they're very good. I did enjoy the collection as I went along but only after I decided to dismiss the introduction's supposed intentions.”
  
  I think this is untrue. The stories are strong, yes. But the anthology achieved what the introduction set out to do. I reread the introduction last night and had to wonder where I went wrong. Here’s where I think my misunderstanding comes into play. I was projecting what I wanted this anthology to be, therefore I went into this with expectations that this book just couldn’t deliver. I thought the anthology was going to portray couples who were in “healthy” relationships, extremely comfortable with their kinky lifestyles, and that the book was designed to show us that kink is just another facet of a healthy sex life. So when some of the characters were unhappy individuals who second-guessed themselves; when lines of consent were blurred; when some of the stories addressed kink in an abstract manner or a throwaway mention, I thought the anthology was failing. But I now realize that is what the introduction was preparing us for. Other facets of sex and relationships are nuanced, why shouldn’t kink get the same treatment?
  
  Weirdly enough the first two stories and the last two stories were the weakest in the bunch for me. The first two stories seem almost typical of what you’d expect from a collection called “Kink.” It didn’t really tell me anything new. The last two stories were either uninteresting or too abstract for my liking. Like with any anthology, there are definitely stronger entries over others. Kim Fu’s story “Scissors” was the best story by far imo. I read it three times. Let’s do a mini ranking:
  
  1. Kim Fu’s story
  2. Larissa Pham
  3. Peter Mountford
  4. Vanessa Clark
  5. Brandon Taylor
  6. Carmen Maria Machado.
  
  
  https://www.instagram.com/p/CMkK59FLP...
• 
  Erik

  The much hyped Kink is much less kinky than its title lets on.
  
  Kink is a collection of stories, written by a coterie of some of the most acclaimed writers of today, that orbit around an attempt to pull back the covers of human desire. This desire - as in the case of Alexander Chee's and R.O. Kwon's stories - can be kinky, but in the case of several other tales, kink is mysteriously absent. The stories are diverse and varied; the backgrounds and experiences come from multiple racial and gendered perspectives. And though kink itself - much like the identities of the books contributors - exists on a spectrum, in several instances upon finishing a story readers are left wondering: where's the kink? Some of the stories, like Brandon Taylor's, do an incredible job opening a reader's eyes to new forms of kinks, but several others do not, either hiding behind their abstract language or a contrived sense of "art."
  
  I understand the editorial appeal of including contemporary best-selling writers, but kink is not a new topic in literature, especially queer literature. Kink does a disservice to its own construction of "kink" by failing to include, or even reference to, these writers who have been kinky for decades.
• 
  Barry Pierce

  a mixed bag of a collection but a lot of fun overall
• 
  Έρση Λάβαρη

  Αν και δεν μπορώ να πω με σιγουριά τι ακριβώς περίμενα απ’ αυτή την ανθολογία, έμεινα στο τέλος κάπως απογοητευμένη. Ορισμένες ιστορίες ήταν εκτός θέματος (εκτός και αν αντιλαμβάνομαι λανθασμένα τον όρο kink, δηλαδή, που δεν το πιστεύω· για καλό και για κακό όμως θα τονίσω πως για ‘μένα περιλαμβάνει οτιδήποτε μπορεί να θεωρηθεί ερωτική/σεξουαλική ιδιοτροπία, χωρίς ωστόσο να αφορά προτιμήσεις στο φύλο ή «συμβατικό» σεξ μεταξύ ατόμων της LGBTQ+ κοινότητας), και οι περισσότερες απ’ όσες σέβονταν τον τίτλο της συλλογής ήτανε πολύ όμοιες μεταξύ τους και μάλλον λίγο αδιάφορες. Ξεχώρισα (και μάλιστα με πολύ ενθουσιασμό) το «Oh, Youth» του Μπράντον Τέιλορ και το «Gospodar» του Γκαρθ Γκρίνγουελ, που τα βρήκα και τα δυο εξαιρετικά, και το «Mirror, Mirror» της Βανέσα Κλαρκ με το «Impact Play» του Πίτερ Μάουντφορντ που ήταν αρκετά καλά.
  
  Γενικώς δεν ήτανε καθόλου κακή προσπάθεια, και είχε σε πολλά σημεία μπόλικο ενδιαφέρον. Θα είχα μείνει πολύ πιο ευχαριστημένη αν δεν είχα τόσο μεγάλες προσδοκίες.
• 
  Traci Thomas

  A mixed collection. Some of the stories are really great and some weren’t for me. I loved how queer the book was and how diverse the characters were. Some of kink got redundant.
• 
  Lotte

  3.25/5. My favourite story was definitely Oh, Youth by Brandon Taylor, but I also really enjoyed The Voyeurs by Zeyn Joukhadar, Trust by Larissa Pham and The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror by Carmen Maria Machado.
• 
  BookOfCinz

  In the introduction for KINK the editors R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell said In many of these stories, kink can also deepen and complicate urgent conversations around how consent is established, negotiated and sometimes broken.
  
  KINK is a collection of short stories written by some of today’s favorite writers. As stated in the introduction, majority of the stories explores sex, consent, agency, desires, deep dark desires and coping. Yes! These stories will have you clutching your pearls and fanning yourself, this is not a collection for the prude at heart (which I think I am).
  
  Overall I think it is a solid collection, I do not think this is a book for everyone but I was insanely curious and I wanted to know what was in this collection. My favorite stories that really stood out for me were:
  Oh Youth by Brandon Taylor
  The Cure by Melissa Forbes
  Safe Word by R.O. Kwon
  Impact Play
  
  If you are looking to read about deep desires, take a peak behind the BDSM curtain, this curated collection of short stories is it!
  
• 
  Shelby

  I wanted to love this, I wanted this to be a book that would let me discover something new.
  Unfortunately this wasn’t it.
  
  Kink is a collection of short stories from several different authors and in each one the narrator has some kind of sexual “kink”. Some of the stories I actually enjoyed while others I felt we’re lacking.
  
  I definitely thought it would be dirtier, and I guess I wanted it to be kinkier? It felt very light in that regard.
  If you’re looking for a quick read with some (lightly) kinky stories, then I’d recommend this book. If you’re well versed in different kinks and are looking for some dirty stories, you won’t find this any different than reading fifty shades of grey.
  
  Overall quick, easy, interesting read.
• 
  Jenni

  2.75 stars.
  
  Most of the stories in this collection were a miss for me, unfortunately. I found a lot of them to not have much depth when considered as a short story and the more explicit aspects of most of the stories did not really engage me or feel unique when compared to the collection as a whole. There were a few stories I really enjoyed, in part because they had more meat in terms of a narrative or ideas presented, which include Melissa Febos’s “The Cure,” “Safeword” by R. O. Kwon, “Oh Youth” by Brandon Taylor (the main reason I requested a copy of this and it did not disappoint), and “The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of The Temple of Horror” by Carmen Maria Machado.
  
  I will also mention that I thought Garth Greenwell’s story “Gospodar” pretty clearly crossed the line for me between a consensual interaction with strong power dynamics and rape, which I was not expecting. While I do think it’s important to recognize these nuances, I think perhaps this anthology was not the place to do that given the anthology’s primary goal appears to be to highlight and legitimize BDSM as a sexual practice (which should not include non-consensual sex). I hadn’t seen other reviewers mention it, so I thought it would put in my two sense about that, particularly given that Greenwell is one of the editors of this anthology.
  
  Thank you to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an early copy of this work through Netgalley. Kink: Stories is scheduled to be released on February 9, 2021.
  
• 
  Trio

  A collection of fifteen short stories, edited by Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon, Kink is a diverse collection by a wide variety of authors. Truly something for everyone. As the editors state in the foreword: the stories treat kink as a “rich act of communication” and “explore the whole gamut of human feelings”.
  
  My favorite is Oh, Youth, Brandon Taylor’s piece on being a seasonal rent boy. An architecture student, the main character pays his bills by spending summers with married couples who are looking to infuse some spice into their love life. Brandon Taylor’s prose, and the meaningful way he delves into relationships and emotions is lovely.
  
  Ranging from Melissa Febos’ clever story The Cure, about a gay woman who revisits sex with men. R.O. Kwon’s Safeword about a husband trying to fulfil his wife’s need for pain, even though it makes him uncomfortable. And Impact Play by Peter Mountford, which is a nice, relatable story about a man navigating his way through life, women, and BDSM. (I liked this one so much I read it twice.)
  
  S&M, humiliation, cross dressing, bondage, exhibitionism - a range of kinks as wide as the range of writing styles in Kink. Each one is short enough it gives a bit of insight into how these kinks impact some folks’ lives. But best of all, it gave me an opportunity to discover authors whose work I’d like to explore further.
  
  thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an advanced reader copy of Kink
• 
  Taylor Givens

  I WANT THIS TO BE THE BEST THING I READ IN 2021. Have you seen this collection of authors?! I'm literally crying right now and honestly i'm just thankful to be alive to witness Garth Greenwell's art in any form. And Brandon Taylor? And Roxane Gay? And R.O. Kwon? and they're writing about kink?! What have we done to deserve this??? I. CAN'T. WAIT!!! Most anticipated release of 2021. This is my dream. <3
• 
  Marianna Tsotra

  This was one of my most anticipated 2021 books and I can guarantee it is worth all the hype.
  
  The short stories in this anthology about kink, fetish and the BDSM community explore sexuality and desires through a psychoanalytical narrative prism, delving deep into each character's past, insecurities, wants and needs. And this is what distinguishes the stories in this collection from plain erotic fiction. Albeit being extremely descriptive, delightfully profane and, ultimately, hot, they remain faithful to the book's core target, as the editors, R. O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell proclaim it: "instead of pathologizing kink, the stories in this anthology treat it as a complex, psychologically rich act of communication. Kink in these stories is a way of processing trauma, and also of processing joy, of expressing tenderness and cruelty and affection and play."
  
  We encounter characters from the whole spectrum of gender and sexual orientation, straight, bi and gay, cis, trans and beautiful drag queens, marking the universality of sexual desire. We get a sneak peek inside the bedrooms (and dungeons) of kinky people, the thrill they experience by dominating or submitting, the thin lines between consent and abuse (a theme masterfully executed in "Gospodar" by Garth Greenwell). The stories explore the notion that (some) kinky people are in need of the idea of someone exploiting them, totally senseless to their needs, or on the contrary of someone succumbing to their every desire. Wanting to keep distinct roles in a dom/sub relationship is actually a way to not let oneself go, to offer the partner vulnerability without exposing anything remotely personal. A risky topic, played out well in stories such as "Trust" by Larissa Pham and "Reach" by Roxane Gay. Melissa Febos's brilliant "The Cure" is about women using their sexual partner's orgasm denial as a means to escaping the patriarchal concept of heterosexual sex centred exclusively on the male orgasm, and was a really great start for the book.
  
  The stories also deal with the shame and secrecy that comes along with kinks: stories like Peter Mountford's "Impact Play" and R. O. Kwon's "Safeword" unveil the sad truth that kinky people feel the need to compartmentalize their fetishes from the rest of their lives, as society is not yet ready to accept them, still viewing them as degenerates and all non-vanilla sexuality as of a psychopathological nature.
  
  This is a very radical, vital book, the kind that does not get published often, but now that it has, it should be read by anyone interested in themes of sexuality, member of the BDSM community or not.
  
  Thank you to Simon & Schuster publishing house and Edelweiss for the advanced reader copy.
• 
  Paige

  disappointing tbh!! I thought it was interesting that the introduction explicitly said the collection wanted to celebrate and depathologize kink when it felt like 75% of the stories had protagonists that were unhappy/unsatisfied/misunderstood/drawn to kink because of trauma.
  
  appreciated the diversity of individuals and relationships depicted, and thought there were a couple bangers, but overall :/
• 
  Gemma

  Listen. LISTEN. I really wanted to like this. I really did. A properly published collection of stories focusing on kink / sex? Sign me up. I was especially excited after reading the introduction and blurb, where Kwon talks about wanting to ‘rescript the larger cultural attitudes that surround [kink]’, something that desperately needs doing in my opinion.
  
  But then I read it. And it just...didn’t do that. At all. Not only do the stories have very little to do with kink, but when they do the people are oftentimes so awful to one another that the book fundamentally fails at its stated goal. In most stories, the people engaging in the kink (again, if at all mentioned) are emotionally manipulative, terrible communicators, and generally just not very nice people.
  
  I wonder if there was a tiny bit of ‘oh, in order for people to take this collection seriously we have to be SERIOUS writers who only deal with DARK and SERIOUS things’ going on. But in this context all that means is that kinky people are once again depicted as being emotionally unstable and abusive people with traumatised pasts. Which ya really didn’t need to do.
  
  I can’t wait for a ‘proper’ publisher to publish something that’s fun and sexy for the sake of it being fun and sexy. People can have fun and be sexy guys. Come on.
  
  This collection isn’t all bad. Removed from the context, a lot of the writing is interesting and enjoyable and I was engaged enough to finish it. I just wish they’d actually achieved their stated aims.
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  Anna

  Dnf because this is trash. I made it through the first story but then the quote below was used in the second story and I just can't.
  
  "I had just gotten out of a relationship with a closeted man so frustratingly asexual in its nature, and so tortured, I was a bit like a man on a fast who didn’t know how to start eating again."
  
  I get that this an anthology and I could just skip this particular story and move to the next in the book, but the sheer fact that the author of this story AND both editors thought this line was appropriate in unacceptable. Asexuality isn't a punchline or a joke and it sure as hell isn't an insult. These authors should know and understand the power of words and to allow this sentence in speaks volumes of their attitude towards asexuality and asexuals and as an asexual, I'm not about to consume anything they produce. Fuck that and fuck them.
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  Sunny

  3.5 stars. A pretty intelligent & queer little collection. Made me uncomfortable 👍👍
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  Nicole

  When I saw the editors and contributors for this collection, I was immediately intrigued. I appreciated the focus of this collection and am honestly surprised there hasn't been a collection quite like this. As the foreword says, "Instead of pathologizing kink, the stories in this anthology treat it as a complex, psychologically rich act of communication." It expands the boundaries of literary fiction with its explorations of desire, love, trust, intimacy, power, and sex across different identities and relationships.
  
  My favorite stories were "Best Friendster Date Ever" by Alexander Chee, "Safeword" by R.O. Kwon, "Oh, Youth" by Brandon Taylor, "Impact Play" by Peter Mountford, and "The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror" by Carmen Maria Machado. Larissa Pham's story "Trust" is the one I still find myself thinking about most.
  
  Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC of this book.
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  Bill Muganda

  This was tastefully done, a collection of love, power, and strong connections of BDSM and other forms of sexual experiences in various spaces. It does an incredible job of introducing readers to a side that is typically frowned upon by society. I'd recommend you go the audiobook route, the performance is truly incredible. Also introduced me to lots of new writers.
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  klare (kaz’s version)

  really impressed by the ability of talented people to get together, pick a complex and interesting topic, and create something so dreadfully boring