Customer Reviews

Bedding Down: A Collection of Winter Erotica (Avon Red)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a really good book to give to your sweetie right before heading off to the ski cabin, or Xmas on the East Coast. But you'd better make sure you'll have some alone time, or you'll both be frustrated!

This is not Penthouse Forum. Although the stories have explicit sections, and will surely get you worked up, there's a real story in every one, and the sex fits in relatively naturally. If you're looking for porn, this isn't it, but if you want to read something interesting, that will get your pulse pounding, you'll enjoy this book.

Not every story will please you; erotica is very personal. On balance, two stories didn't really work for me, but with seven novellas, you will surely find pleasure in this book. And if you give it to that special someone, and set the mood, you'll _both_ find pleasure, somewhere out there in the cold.

I just finished reading Bedding Down in my bath tub this morning. I enjoyed all of the stories. My favorite two stories in the book were Sophie Mouette's and Alison Tyler's. Sophie's story is set in a Victorian era house turned museum. She and her lover find a set of steamy love letters in a desk and use them as inspiration. The Victorian costumes they wore and the description of the removing of those costumes was very sensual. In Alison Tyler's story, the heroine, Michele, is doing all the right things for the wrong man. This story is both funny and sexy, and in the end, she ends up with someone who understands her and is right for her. I identified with this character a lot. The more work I read by this author, the more impressed I am at her range. Her writing is not only very arousing and vivid, it can be funny or bittersweet or dark as well.

All the stories in this collection were romantic and had happy endings, which I personally prefer to the darker tone of some of the kinkier erotic. The stories in the book were heartwarming as well as being arousing. I very much enjoyed this book, I would recommend it to friends who enjoy romance as well as erotica. Kudos to Rachel Kramer Bussell for putting together a great collection, and kudos to the authors for their great work.

It's cold outside, but this book offers seven, well written, and hot short stories that will surely warm you up, lickety-split. One for each day of the week! Each story, like each talented writer offers something for everyone. You'll find romance blooming in the dead of winter as well as bonfires burning with passion and lust in this book.

p.s. I've folded down more pages to share with a friend the next time the snow starts to fall - let's just say it's a little something extra special to help keep the high price of heating costs down...while insuring my body temperature is running hot, hot, hot....

Reviews that is. So I'll keep it short and sweet. If you are a fan of the anthology, you will like this book. If you are a fan of contemporary erotic fiction, you'll like it. If you are a fan of RKB or Alison Tyler or have ever read a Kristina Wright story--you'll like it. Two of my favorite subjects, winter and sex. I can't complain. I have to say that the stand out stories for me as far as writing were Alison Tyler's "It's Not the Weather" (I may be slightly in love with Jeremiah) and KW's "One Night in Winter". A great book to sample a little at a time. With a nice cup of tea or hot chocolate or some whiskey in front of a fire. It'll keep you warm on the coldest of nights.

While I've been a fan of RKB for a while, I really have to say that she outdid herself with this collection. The stories were more evolved, the characters more fleshed out, and I found myself longing to read more about them. The stories drew me in and kept me reading, wondering where each couple would end up.

While all the stories were well written, three had me completely unable to put the book down until the very last page.

"Six Weeks on Sunrise Mountain, Colorado" by Gwen Masters

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" by Marilyn Jaye Lewis

"Sweet Season" by Shanna Germain

I think that the stories were outstanding, but a little light on the hot sex we've come to expect from RKB anthologies. If you're looking for something hardcore, fast and furious, then this might not be the book for you. While the sex is there, the writing seems to be centered around the couples and their relationship, not the sex itself.

For a girl like me who loves to read about real couples and real sex, this was the perfect balance of both. If I'd share one book from my collection with my friends this winter, this book would be it.

This may be my pick of RKB's editions. The stories are a bit longer, the characters a bit more vivid and passion takes center stage over sex. If you're looking for a romantic collection appropriate to the season, pour some hot chocolate and enjoy Bedding Down.

Either way you look at it, this one is a washout. Most of the seven stories here are too tame to be real erotica, smothered by standard romance-novel female protagonist second-guessing, self-doubt, vacillation, etc . This book is trying to find and mine a sweet spot where both romance and bold erotic fiction are at max influence, and the result is less than breathtaking; they both take the wind out of each other.

There is a modicum of erotic fiction here, buried in the overburden of romance. When the dirty bits finally come around, there is some explicit terminology and action, with just a couple of the stories starting to get truly dirty. There are a few instances of the romance-genre euphemisms, and they serve to tone everything down, deny the action, call it something it's not, attempting demure and coy when that's the last thing needed.

Almost every single one of the men in these stories is a pathetic caricature. Here goes: woman leaves dead-end small town to make her way, leaving behind a sexy, hunky guy who for his own reasons is fine n' dandy with the dead-end small town, only to have to return there and face him and eventually give in to long-denied sexual congress with him. The guys are bland go-nowhere duds, without the gumption or even the awareness that the women have to get out of the hopeless home town, but when it comes down to it, they've got everything that is needed: steely good looks, rugged clothing, piercing brown eyes, a heavenly scent of leather and musk, and personal plumbing that is everything a woman could want. Barf.

There are seven stories, at about 37 pages each, little novelettes.

The leadoff story is slow, with a woman who's a total tramp for a brutish stud, yet neither of them can admit it. The guy is greasy and abusive, but although Susannah has the fortitude to make it on her own out there in the great big world, she's a total slave to the married bum. Oh, and it's winter.

The second story features a billionaire fleeing from the world and a high-viz breakup, snowed in in a remote mountain cabin with an intrepid paparazzo, with a bear attack and avalanche thrown in. It's all lame sentiment and sidelong glances and a distinct lack of action, with a sappy ending right out of Romancing the Stone.

The third story is about a wonderfully sexually healthy California trollop (and that's a compliment) who goes to extreme wintertime lengths to get through to a whining slob. For a woman-centric romance collection, I was amazed at the pathetic depths this woman would go to please an undeserving idiot identified so clearly within the first three paragraphs. In the end, she gets her man, and he's all a girl could want.

The fourth story is an interminable mutual whine- and guilt-fest between a husband and wife at odds over conception. Talk about a massive turn-off, with the husband bleating about his guilt at being nagged, being teased and deceived, and her whining over her screaming need to make a baby. And it's cold and snowy outside. Not a good erotic story, not one bit.

The fifth story is a present-tense deeply overwrought northern Minnesota glopfest between Gideon and Alana, she coming off as a massively selfish city girl unwilling to assist her man in his time of need. And they crash rhythmically together a few times as they deadpan their emotional tragedy, both unwilling to actually do anything to fix it.

The sixth story had real promise, but its truly lame backstory, complete with two idiotic gomer criminals right out of a TV sitcom, ruined it all. There's an old mansion, "knickknacks, lace and frippery," a man and a woman snowed in with their long-hidden desires slowly finding expression, the power out, and every time the heat and passion built, they both fizzled like a snow cornice collapsing on a campfire. Fail.

The last story has upstate New York and maple syrup featuring in another story of a successful girl back to her roots, and a grubby, dead-end stud she left behind finally taking her to where she's always wanted to go. So predictable. This one has a bit of explicit power transfer, with the stud actually breaking our heroine's will as she throbs with the heat of her desire and her sweaty blah blah blah

There are no multiples here; all stories are strictly man v. woman. There is no BDSM, no gay/lesbian, nothing off the wall or kinky, hell, barely even any oral or other interesting action. As erotic fiction goes, it's terribly bland and unimaginative, with only the environment of snow/ice/cold/winter supposed to make it different and somehow sexy, which most of the time did not work.

Bottom line: this book is more romance than erotic. When they finally get down to it--and they most certainly do--it's largely the result of 35 pages of tired, clichéd, predictable buildup. The characters are stock and shallow, the only real gimmick here being cold weather and its conceptual opposition to the heat of passion. If you like romance more than the much more direct erotic fiction, then this is the one for you. If you want quick, direct, explicit and varied sexual action, there are many other collections that will serve you better than this one.

Perhaps I have been spoiled by the broad range of erotica literature you can now find online. But I found this collection a bit tame. The stories were entertaining but as for being erotic...well I would rather watch porn. Yes I watch porn and I am female. What of it?

Ms. Bussel has taken the traditional erotica compilation and allowed it to breathe with her latest anthology, Bedding Down. I'm never one to turn down smut, mind you, and often use erotic literature for mental foreplay, but Bedding Down was not (if you'll pardon the expression) your run of the mill bodice-ripper.

Bedding Down calls on a host of excellent erotica writers, most of whom I've had the pleasure of reading in other anthologies. These stories are not afraid to explore the darker side of winter twined in alongside sensual heat, like the embers of a fire on a snowy night. Death is lightly touched upon in two stories, and the struggle to balance between everyday life, decisions and time together is very eloquently displayed.

I enjoyed the book as a whole, with the only story I wasn't overly fond of being the first (One Night in Winter by Kristina Wright), but only then because it took me awhile to decipher which character was which; the premise and the sex were still lovely to read. Alison Tyler adds a bit of levity with the exasperated and ever-hopeful heroine of "It's Not The Weather", and Sophie Mouette's "Hidden Treasure" plunges you into a spirited romp in a dark mansion. The struggle against the cold is engagingly laid out in Gwen Masters' "Six Weeks on Sunrise Mountain, Colorado", and Marilyn Jaye Lewis' "Baby, It's Cold Outside" echoed some of my own experiences of being engaged with all the drawn out discussions on the future that entails.

My favorite story (which surprised me a bit because I'm normally more amiable towards lighthearted offerings) was definitely Isabelle Grey's "Northern Exposure". It made the heart ache in both sadness and happiness and actually made me tear up, which is for me the sign of excellent writing. A close second is Shanna Germain's "Sweet Season", which makes perfect use of setting to draw the reader into sights, sounds, and scents; I'm also partial to Vermont culture, so that didn't hurt!

All in all, a book that I'm very pleased to own, and an absolutely stunning read in the subtle beginnings of December. Best enjoyed with a mug of hot cocoa, a box of tissues, and maybe a bit of time with a handsome leading man.

A big disappointment, needs to be clearly marked as a romance book for women who like that kind of stuff, not any kind of erotica. Predictable sappy stories with bits of explicit sex tossed in, not a one of them original or interesting.