Publisher: MLR, 2009
Genre: Romance
Sub-genre: LGBT
Rating: 4 1/2 pints of blood



I have to admit, this cover has grown on me. I didn't think much of it one way or the other, but receiving my print copy I think shifted me over to the side of actively liking it. (It looks much nicer than the tiny preview snapshot.) For all its simplicity, the wedding rings and rainbow heart leave no doubt as to what the book is about, and I appreciate the stark background to contrast with the colours of the heart.

For anyone who's not aware, I Do! is an anthology of LGBT stories, and full proceeds to to Lambda Legal Fund's fight for marriage equality.

Like a lot of other people, I'm not always a fan of anthologies. For a typical volume with 20 short stories, you'll find a couple that are wonderful, a couple that are appallingly bad, and the rest somewhere in the middle, a big lump of mediocrity. It's annoying to shell out full price for a book you know it's likely you'll only enjoy a small portion of, so with a few exceptions, I tend to shy away from anthologies.

This was one of those exceptions. Not being American, there's not a lot I can do in protest of Proposition 8 or the even more appalling aftermath. I can, however, buy this book. Which I obviously did.

And you know what? It's amazing. Really, there wasn't a single story of the twenty presented here I didn't enjoy in some way. Of course I have my favourites (and a couple of authors I have to look up to see what else they've written I can glom), but each one is a worthy tale in its own right, and as a collection it's... I said amazing already, right? Well, it's still as amazing as it was two sentences again.

If any of you are familiar with Sandra Boynton's Consider Love, it acts as a wonderful summary of this anthology. For those who don't, you probably think it's odd I'm comparing an occasionally erotic LGBT collection to a cheerful children's book, but that's only because you haven't read either of them. Boynton's book starts with "Consider love. Look here and there. Consider love. It's everywhere. Consider love. Observe a while. It comes in every shape and style." It then goes on to describe the different kinds of love, from hopeful love to never-told love to love gently ecstatic.

What does this have to do with I Do!? The stories in the anthology cover the gamut, showing snapshots of just about every type of love story imaginable. First love, reunited love, forbidden love, experimental love, comfortably settled love... there are modern settings, historical settings, and fantasy settings. There's boy-on-boy and girl-on-girl. Some of the stories made me laugh, some made me tear up, and some just gave me the warm fuzzies. Some even made me stop and reflect how wonderful it is to love in a time and place where everyone has the freedom to marry who they want. Bottom line? I responded emotionally to this anthology.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the beautiful way the book is set up. The table of contents not only lists off the title and author of each story, but lets you know if the story is m/m or f/f and the "heat" degree, whether it's sweet, spicy, or scorching. So basically, readers can pick whatever they're in the mood for or skip stories that might be a little hotter than they're comfortable with (although seriously, anyone skipping stories is missing out).

It's been awhile since I've picked up a book that absorbed me to the point where I was putting other things off so I could keep reading, so imagine my surprise when an anthology, of all books, was one that did just that.

I Do! is available as an e-book or in print form.