“Can’t Help The Way That I Feel” Book Review
“Can’t Help the Way That I Feel” is a Cleis Press book edited by Lori Bryant-Woolridge. The book is a softcover book with black and white pages inside the book. The book is 229 pages long, and it includes 12 different stories. This makes each story about 20 pages long. That’s a lot longer than your average erotic anthology story. The front of the book and back of the book show a nude woman with strategically placed flowers on her body, and it’s not obviously explicit, but some people may question what you’re reading if they see the title of the book. The tagline for this book is “Sultry stories of African American love, lust, and fantasy”.
I was surprisingly impressed with this book. I wasn’t expecting much from this book, to be honest, but I ended up being really, really pleasantly surprised. Unlike other erotic anthologies, this book focuses a lot on the plot. There isn’t any short stories that just have a barely-there plot and lots of sex. Instead, the stories have lots of plot and lots of sex. In most stories, there are multiple sex scense within a single story, and all of the stories have really unique plots that I never would have thought about for a sex story. It’s actually really great, and for that reason, I found myself absorbed in each one of the stories. It’s almost like reading a very short book that happens to have in it; except this book contains multiple instances of those very-short books. It’s really unique, very creative, and a lot of fun to read.
The stories vary in plot, but for the most part, all of these stories deal with African American women in heterosexual relationships. (Not all of them are long-term relationships, but it’s always between a man and woman) The writing expresses African American dialect once in awhile, but it’s not distracting at all, and in fact, it actually enhances the realism of the stories. There is a story that contains a threesome as well which makes for really varied reading.
I think one of my favorite stories was “Tandem” by The Big Bamboo. It’s a story about a woman who is stressed, so she goes in to see a masseur. Instead, it turns out that her gift card was good for two massuers, and she ends up in a very sexy threesome that was great to read about.
Another favorite was “The Accidental Escort” by Erika J. Kendrick. This was a story about a woman who loses her big-wig job and ges out on a alcohol binge. When she comes home, she starts to flirt with the doorman, and of course, ends up getting a lot more than she originally bargained for.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I enjoyed reading it a lot. All of the sex is sexy and arousing, and all of the plots are really unique and add a lot to the stories. If you don’t enjoy plot-driven erotica, you won’t enjoy this book, but if you find that most books don’t have enough plot for you, this one is going to be one of your favorites. I really love it, and I actually plan on re-reading it again in the future. Thanks to Cleis Press for sending me “Can’t Help the Way That I Feel” for review.
