Courting the Coronavirus: A Positively Viral Love Story by Lee Taylor

He calls himself...Count Covid (46%).

It's official-- 2020 is the year we strayed far, far away from God's light. I don't even believe in God, but if I did, I just know he'd-- sorry, He'd-- be looking down on us, shaking His head, and asking Himself, "What did I do to deserve this? I gave them the ability to write sonnets and the answer to world peace, and instead they're fucking the plagues I sent down to punish the lot of them for being such feckless buntcakes!!!"

In case KISSING THE CORONAVIRUS didn't have enough cringe-tastic sexings for you, there's now an (unrelated) follow-up called COURTING THE CORONAVIRUS. The best way to describe it is "more virus erotica but make it historical... sort of." Also, there's a particle collider that doubles as a time machine.

Yes, you did just read that correctly.

Joan is an ordinary girl. She does ordinary girl things, like dribbling arousal juices out of every orifice and tripping over fuck-all. You know, typical womanly things. Joan is angry about Covid because she is a slutty millennial and all she wanted to get into college for was to participate in fraternity sex parties. Instead, she's in a lab doing sciencey things... for science. And speaking of science, don't you hate it when you go to science lessons but you're so aroused you trip (because you're a woman) and sort of throw your viral sample into a hadron collider?

And don't you especially hate it when your hadron collider is also a time machine?

And don't you REALLY especially hate it when the act of traveling through time means that the virus sample becomes a living vector that ingratiates itself into the English nobility of the 1800s to create its own sex empire just for you, a clumsy, horny woman who loves doing clumsy horny woman things?

And also, you totally just fucked the virus.

I don't think there's much to say here about the plot-- except WHY???? So I'll write about my feelings on the book. I didn't come in here expecting great literature obviously. I wanted a laugh. I'm scared about the upcoming election and I miss going out with my friends, and all I wanted to do was laugh. I didn't really laugh. KISSING THE CORONAVIRUS was bad, but it was also pretty funny and fit neatly into the niche of other monsterotica out there that seemed designed to horrify and bemuse more than they are to titillate and arouse (although don't kink shame). COURTING THE CORONAVIRUS, on the other hand, has, as other reviewers have pointed out, an aura of misogyny and crude-to-be-rude humor that's a bit too gross and uncomfortable to really be funny. I actually felt kind of depressed when I'd finished. For anyone who wonders if anyone out there would really LiveTweet the apocalypse when it happens, the answer is yes. And also, there would be erotica of it called "I FUCKED THE BURNING BALL OF RAT FECES THAT KILLED THE PLANET AND HE MADE ME CALL HIM DADDY."

Like KISSING, COURTING THE CORONAVIRUS features a green anthropomorphized Covid who formed out of a lab tube that was dropped by a horny female lab student. I'm guessing that this is going to end up being canon for the inevitable Covid erotica that end up succeeding this one. I'm OK with Covid being portrayed as the Hulk, even if it weirds me out, since all of the pics I've seen have been red, yellow, and white. But w/e. I liked the cheekiness of KISSING THE CORONAVIRUS more, and didn't really think this book was all that funny. For example, her boob sweat lubricates her through the collider (which she compares to a gigantic cock being squeezed through a "virginal cunt"), and when she pops into the 19th century, the literal first thing she does is plunge two fingers into herself to make sure she still exists. (Cogito ergo cum?) I joked that KISSING THE CORONAVIRUS read like it had been written by a middle school boy. Well. COURTING THE CORONAVIRUS reads like it had been written by a middle school boy who has just been dumped by his girlfriend.

I'm awarding a few bonus points for the ingenious inclusion of the hadron collider, because that's the kind of wtfuckery you can't make up and it's why I keep coming back for more, but apart from that, no. You can leave your "pocket rockets" and cock-sized fingers, and vaginal snail trails at home, thanks.

1 out of 5 stars