Upon first receiving the book, I opened to a random page and read. I found myself engrossed in a lascivious tale of an airport security employee taking great liberties while searching a hapless young woman. The writing was quality; the vocabulary was hot instead of silly or clinical; the power dynamic was sensationally sexy. It was clearly an exemplar of a spicy fantasy that provided great ammunition for immediate arousal as well as fantastic material for later, when I could have some alone time with a paramour.

Other chapters I enjoyed included group sex with strangers on a passenger train, lesbian finger fucking in the middle of a public beach, and a seemingly true life list of rules for a submissive sexual slave. They make for great fodder for my own imagination in addition to being well-written pieces of erotica.

There are stories for the kink-loving ladies, bicurious bitches, rape fantasy fans, romantic revelers, exhibitionism enthusiasts, and submissive sluts. Violet Blue, sex writer extraordinaire and editor of this collection of short salacious tales, did a notable job of picking authors and stories that would appeal to a reasonably broad variety of females. Unlike an anthology of more specific genre erotica (like lesbian BDSM or bend-over-boyfriend, for instance), this book dips into multiple worlds of sexual fantasies, giving nearly everyone at least one chapter of panty moistening.

But this wide variety of options means that while most readers will be infinitely pleased by one or two tales and turned on by three or four others, there will be a good chunk of the book worth skipping entirely, as the subject matter isn’t particularly arousing. I, for one, will admit publicly that rape fantasies leave me cold and dry. I get that lots of women love them and those who do will find great wet, squirming joy in several of this tome’s selections, but for me, they were just filler.

In addition to subjects that were uninteresting, there were some stories that required far too much set-up for my personal tastes. In the case of “Endymion,” one story included in Lips Like Sugar, a reader has to survive seven of the story’s 11 and a half pages before there’s even any action. In and of itself, this is no crime, but once I was all hot and bothered from the previous story, it was kind of a wicked buzzkill to have to start over at square one.

For readers who only need or want one story to set the mood, though, this book is pure gold. Find the story that piques your interest (be it fingering your boyfriend’s ass until he says no, sucking off a friend’s roommates just for fun, getting bound up and fucked hard by your husband on a construction site), and let the good times roll.