White Hot Holidays, Vol. I

White Hot Holidays is an anthology of nine erotic short stories by nine different authors, all with a Christmas theme (which in some cases is quite vague or tenuous). It's quite a mixed bag: there are some interesting and original stories, sexy and sensual tales; others are just vehicles for the description of non-stop sexual acts and are practically devoid of plot, which soon gets boring. The characters are fairly one-dimensional, and the dialogue can be a bit wooden.

A humanoid alien finds his true love; a benevolent vampire becomes enamoured by his Holiday rescue recipient; an amateur cat burglar pays her victim in kind to avoid prosecution; a girl on the rebound decides to be daring; a cowboy and an interior designer find themselves magically locked in the house with a big box of condoms; a shop assistant is challenged to sit on Santa's lap; a young wife in a 19th century goldrush town discovers her husband has visited a brothel, and promptly does the same; new neighbours act on their attraction with the assistance of a wood faery who hitches a ride into the house on a Christmas tree; a New Year's kiss leads to a night of passion in a sex club.

Readers should be prepared for quite explicit descriptions of sexual acts: apparently no permutation is taboo and penetration of almost every conceivable orifice is described, as well as the use of sex toys and improvisations thereof. Also featuring are sex with strangers and sex with work colleagues; there is some BDSM (but readers who have slogged their way through the Fifty Shades Trilogy will have had their fill of that, even if this predates FSOG) and a threesome that is rather mechanical.

One feature common to all the stories is the male/female main character happy ever-after-ending. Readers who appreciate erotica might enjoy these stories, although this is not a book to be read in large chunks as that results in an erotica overload which renders the sex repetitive and tedious. Probably the best stories are by Leda Swann (Ice On Her Wings) and (I kid you not!) Cricket Starr (Ghosts Of Christmas Past).