I enjoy reading as much as I possibly can. I’m not too particular about the books I will read. There are a few series I prefer to stay away from, but other than that I’m willing to read anything. I have read a few books of erotica so far, as well as a few sex “how-to” guides just for entertainment. When Eden started carrying Letters to Penthouse XXXXII I decided to choose it as my free assignment. I’d never read a book by Penthouse and was curious as to what it would be like.

Letters to Penthouse XXXXIIis a softcover volume written by the editors of Penthouse magazine. It was published in 2011 by Grand Central Publishers. The book contains 289 pages of erotica. Penthouse magazine is published for a male audience. It features nude photos of models, sex tips, and articles about things like cars and sports. It’s pretty much the male equivalent of Cosmopolitan magazine but with nudity.


Size comparison with another collection of erotica.

Unlike the vast majority of sex-related books I’ve read, this one closely resembles typical fiction paperbacks. It’s softcover, with the cover measuring about 6 ¾ inches by 4 inches. The cover depicts the outline of a woman entangled in the first three X’s of book’s volume. Below this is the subtitle “Hot and Horny in Class.” Inside, the pages are a lower quality paper that feels a bit rough. The ink does not smudge if it happens to get wet. The font is clear and pretty easy for me to read.

Opening the book, the first page you’ll come across is a list of the other books in the Letters to Penthouse series. Since most of their books are titled with a Roman numeral, this book is number 42 in the series. Strangely, the editors decided to go with improper Roman numerals for this volume. It should actually be XLII. More than three of the same Roman numerals should never be used to express a number, so the XXXX is incorrect.

After the list of other books by Penthouse, you’ll come across a title page. After that, the book simply starts. There is no table of contents or index section of this book. If you like a particular story, you’ll need to mark it to find it again.

Each story varies in length. Some are one or two pages long while others are 4 or 5 pages long. None of them are all terribly too long. I can get through a story in 5 minutes or less. This particular collection of stories centers on the main theme of learning/college. Not all of the stories are about students. Some are about professors and some involve tutors. The situations the people in the stories get into vary widely. Some involve orgies or threesomes, some are about masturbation and voyeurism, and some involve sex with one partner. A few stories have a theme of BDSM.

Now I’ll provide a few summaries of stories found within the book.

College Students Host Impromptu Orgy In Their Living Room: In this story, a group of friends (four girls and two guys) participate in an orgy. It starts off with a couple having sex and turns into two couples having sex in the same room. The last two girls enter and it turns into an orgy.

College Girl Gets an Eyeful When She Spies on Two of Her Classmates: In this story, a girl is walking back to her dorm and decides to investigate the gym after seeing the lights were on in there. She looks in the door and sees two male basketball players having sex on the floor. She watches from afar, and then slowly creeps closer until she is caught and joins the fun.

Sorority Sex Kittens Purr with Pleasure When Trying Out New Dildos and Vibrators: Two sorority sisters (and lovers) come back to school after a summer break. One gifts the other a bag of sex toys, which they then try out.

Bold, Sensual Beauty Takes Lingerie Lover to the Next Plateau of Cross-Dressing Joy: A man discovers he enjoys wearing women’s panties and recollects on the memories of a time he was with a woman who dressed him in lingerie. She ties him to the bed and uses a dildo to please him anally.

Like I said, the situations, places, people, and objects used in each story vary widely. A few seemed a bit similar in plot and used the same fetish, but it wasn’t too many of them. I would suggest looking at the other books if you’re not particularly interested in school-themed stories.

Continued..

After having read the whole book, I honestly did not enjoy any of it. While the stories themselves are different and are supposedly submitted by readers to Penthouse, they all read like they were written by the same person. The same adjectives and nouns are used to describe things in many of the stories. For example, most stories describe the male’s cum as “creamy” and if said cum is being swallowed by a partner, they are always “guzzling every last drop.” Using these same phrases from story to story and using the same writing style just leads me to believe the stories were all written by the editors. Physical descriptions of people involved in the stories often seem to be “cookie-cutter.” In real life, not every woman has massive breasts, just like not every man has an enormous penis.

I have a couple of other erotica books I bought for my fiancé. I have read some of them out of boredom. Going from story to story in those, you get a feel for each writer’s style. Each story feels very unique and introduces you to unique characters. That is not the case in this book.

I was really turned off by the lack of safety discussed from story to story. Not one story mentioned the use of protection, despite the fact that some stories involved sex between strangers. A few also disregard safety when using toys anally or in general inserting things into the anus. You simply do not insert a dry penis into an anus and begin pounding it roughly.

Overall, I think if you’re looking for something to just get off to really quickly, this will probably be fine. If you’d like something with more details, character introduction, and a bit more sex scenes per story, I suggest looking at other publications of erotica. If you’re looking for a collection of erotica to help give you ideas for how to play with different fetishes or something, again, you’ll want to look elsewhere. This stuff is just like reading porn, not reading a work of art.

I still don't care for this book. Since I already read through the whole thing prior to my review, I haven't really had any reason to reread it. If each story were more interesting and unique, I might have referred to them again for specific things to try out with my partner, but since they all read as generic erotica, I just kind of put the book away. I'll probably hold onto it for the time being since I can't exactly just donate it or give it to someone, but I won't be reading it again unless I get really, really bored.