The subtitle of the book under review (in which the missing adjective “Heterosexual” should modify the noun “Women”) implies a question: How does erotic romance for women differ from the equivalent genre for men? The glib answer is that an equivalent genre for men would be pornographic rather than erotic, much less romantic.

But for argument’s sake let’s suppose that there were such a thing as erotica for straight men; how would erotica for straight women differ from it? Women’s erotica requires a greater amount of context, and this is all the more the case when the sub-genre specifies love or at the very least infatuation as that context. Furthermore, in erotica for women the sex scenes include more foreplay than would a similar narrative intended for a straight male readership, and the female narrators provide more detailed physical descriptions of their male objects of desire than of themselves.

The plots of all 20 stories in this collection illustrate the equation postulated by sexologist Jack Morin in his book The Erotic Mind: attraction + an obstacle = desire. The dramatic equivalent of “an obstacle” would be a crisis in the second act, and in each of these stories the first-person narrator and her partner (often a husband or boyfriend) or love/lust interest must overcome some obstacle or resolve some crisis before the story reaches its sexually combustive conclusion. The erotic heat in these stories is thus created by the evocation of desire before any sex acts are described.

The specific obstacles differ depending on the characters’ life situations. For two career couples the obstacle is one of scheduling. For single women the obstacle is discerning the object of her lust/affection’s intentions. For married women in some of the stories extra-marital temptations provoke a crisis of conscience and an examination of their own hearts and priorities. There are no stories of polyamorous women managing to schedule intimate time with both a husband and a lover, something the editor (who in her blog has indicated a preference for non-exclusive relationships) might want to keep in mind for a future story.

In several of these stories the dramatic setting or situation is described over seven or eight pages, followed by foreplay for another page or two, after which intercourse gets only a couple of sentences (and unlike erotic narratives by male authors, there are few if any changes in position). This may in fact reflect many women’s sexual experiences. In two of the stories the men apologize for reaching orgasm too soon. All of the narrators provide explicit anatomical descriptions of their states of arousal and sensations during sex, but only a few of them mention their G-spots, which is perhaps fictional confirmation of research that suggests that fewer than two fifths of adult women have identified their G-spots and three fifths of women rarely or never climax during intercourse.

In “Five Senses,” editor Rachel Kramer Bussel’s contribution, the couple skip vaginal intercourse entirely in favor of anal intercourse (during which only the narrator’s partner climaxes) followed by cunnilingus (during which the narrator climaxes). Fellatio occurs more often in these stories than cunnilingus, which may also reflect the authors’ real life experiences. In a nod to safer sex practices, in those stories where the narrators’ partners are not yet husbands or boyfriends (and in some stories even when the relationship is long standing and monogamous) the authors make sure a condom is employed. One of the narrators wonders what her partner’s semen would feel like dripping out of her were they not using a condom, which reminds older readers that there are people who have come of age since the beginning of the AIDS pandemic who have never had unprotected sex.

In her introduction Kramer Bussel indicates that her favorite story in the collection is “My Dark Knight” by Jacquelline Applebee, a story featuring two black Britons in which the narrator wins, if not a prince in shining armor, a historical re-enactor who owns a set of armor. To that fine erotic romance Kramer Bussel’s “Five Senses,” featuring a well-matched artistic interracial couple; and “The Morning Ride,” by Delilah Devlin, which takes place in a Manhattan subway car, also deserve special mention. Noteworthy as well are Teresa Noelle Roberts’ “Getting It Right,” which BDSM enthusiasts will enjoy; and “Big Bed Sex” by Donna George Storey, a celebration of marital hotel sex. That none of the stories in this collection feature a narrator over the age of 50 is a regrettable omission.

Unfortunately some of the stories are written in pedestrian prose with banal overwritten lines such as, “She couldn’t cut him out of her life any more than she could cut him out of her heart.” The book’s back cover blurb claims that “Passion will be impossible to put down until the very last page,” but readers accustomed to the work of more sophisticated prose stylists may want to savor the stories one at a time as guilty pleasures in between more substantial reading.

These stories are not literary fiction and don’t claim to be. They will, however, remind unattached readers what being in a sexually charged romantic relationship feels like and may put partnered readers in the mood for sex more frequently—though those who happily find themselves in the latter category know that as steamy as these stories get they are not nearly as hot as the real thing.