Rated: X-mas

Twice Blessed by Rachel Bo – Jenny is on her way to Los Angeles to start her new career in costuming. While driving down the highway in her red Mustang convertible, she becomes overheated in the hot Arizona sun. Rather than stopping to remove her bra she decides to take it off while she is driving – and loses hold of it in the wind. Wouldn’t you know! The bra lands on the windshield of the only other vehicle in sight, a blue pickup truck driven by two gorgeous, blue-eyed young men...

Home For the Holidays by Stephanie Vaughan – Valerie has had a crush on her friend Suzi’s brother Dan since they were all kids. Unexpectedly, Suzi finds out that Valerie wants a special Christmas present, so during their visit to Suzi and Dan’s parents’ house at Christmas, Suzi makes sure that Val gets her Christmas wish. All she needs is the cooperation of Dan, now a police officer, and Ty, also a police officer and Dan’s partner.

Christmas Noir by Barbara Karmazin – In the late 21st century, Shannon McNal is the President of the Herm Foundation. This is an organization that upholds the rights of hermaphrodites, enabling them to live as their true selves rather than undergo surgery to attempt to make them male or female. This mission is anathema to a small group of religious fanatics who are attempting to prevent the Foundation from doing its work by picketing and chanting outside the Foundation’s building and the herms’ living quarters. Now the harassment has gone far beyond picketing into murder of an employee of the Herm Foundation. Detectives Tanny Jones and Fergus DeSoto are assigned to act as Shannon’s bodyguards and stay with her at all times. Will they be able to solve the case before another person is killed?

These three stories have two themes in common in that each story happens at Christmastime, and that each plot concerns a ménage à trois. In most other respects, they are very different. Twice Blessed is a shape shifter/paranormal/contemporary romance involving one woman and two men; Home for the Holidays is a contemporary romance with a bit of kink, also with one woman and two men; and Christmas Noir is a futuristic murder mystery/romance in which the lead characters are a man, a woman, and a hermaphrodite.

It is a special pleasure to read an anthology in which the stories are all of such high quality. I tried to choose my favorite among the three stories in this anthology, but they were each so good that I was unable to choose among them. Each story has a different tone that reflects its author’s special style, yet each is skillfully and tightly written. The lead characters in each story are carefully developed and lovingly detailed, so that each character seemed like a real person to me.

Because the theme of this anthology is love between three people instead of two, the many sex scenes are by definition not vanilla. Although most of the sex scenes contain male/female sex, many other styles of loving are involved. This book is not for people who are offended by male/male sexual contact, oral and anal sex, BSDM (heavy on the bondage), sexual contact with weres in animal form, interracial sex or hermaphroditism. In addition, Christmas Noir, being a murder mystery, contains some very graphic violence and gore. In each story, the language used to describe these scenes is explicit and graphic, and the anthology as a whole is rated “Scorching” by the publisher.

However, for those readers who like their romances sexually hot and mentally stimulating, I unreservedly give this book my highest recommendation!

Reviewed by: Jean