Patrick Tumblety

I was provided an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Find more of my reviews at Carlene's Corrupted Reads.

I love anthologies, I could read just anthologies forever and probably be happy. I like meeting multiple characters, feeling through poems, and reading the unique voices the authors have. Death Love Lust was so unique when it comes to anthologies though, it's dark romance and I wasn't sure I would love any of it at first, but found myself enjoying every story and poem immensely. More that just death, love, and lust, there are incubus, ghosts, M/M and F/F relationships, grim reapers, and more. The stories were so unique, complete in their own way, and felt distinctly different. I looked at each one with fresh eyes, there was no blending together. I appreciated how the dark stories were mirrored by heartfelt ones, with poetry in between that brought the individual parts of the title into perspective and weaved eternal love through every word. I found myself loving the short stories I would never have reached for on my own, a personal favorite was The Devil's Dozen.

Some of the stories are just pages in lengths, others chapters, but each character is so easy to connect to. As soon as I accepted the odd pairings, and just accepted the tales of death, love and lust, it was easy to read and see from the character's perspective. It made me think a lot more than I expected as well, especially about eternal love, leaving an imprint before you go, and general lust between two when faced with some of the scenarios in the stories. Plus, I don't reach for a lot of supernatural anymore and I am so glad I did with this one, because I really enjoyed reading from the perspective of Death. There's such a wide variety in this and I definitely found myself rereading the poems and the darkly sexy shorts.

Death Love Lust was a really great collection and I felt touched on death, love, and lust all equally. I loved the darker aspect to it, the erotica wasn't nearly as much as I was expecting, and the overall tying factor of eternal love made the stories have so much depth and emotion.

Favorites:
Devil's Dozen
Restless Sinners
Lust
Don't Open Your Eyes… (más)