This first book did a really great job of setting up the world! I love me some world building! The alien planet Ketahn lives on is interesting and “other worldly” enough for it to be believable so I was able to really immerse myself in it. I loved learning about the vrix and their society, the descriptions of everything hit it home for me.

The romance between our leads was… goodish. I enjoyed seeing them learn things about each other and getting comfortable with each other.

I love Ketahn’s pov in regards to Ivy, he makes everything seem so passionate and intense. When reading through Ivy I feel like I’m missing something. I’m missing some of her character, some of her story, her motivations, like she wasn’t really an important part of this story. It’s never explained why she was chosen to be on the ship for colonization, she doesn’t seem to have any real skills for it so I can’t imagine that out of… maybe 10,000 applicants she was picked. I also don’t know what she cares about except starting new. She doesn’t talk about anything else.

One big gripe, Ivy and Ketahn pick up each other’s languages really fast… faster than I would expect. It feels unreal how well their able to communicate in a month.

She didn’t decide to ask him about where he found her until they were together for a month. That’s an awfully long time. Their language barrier shrunk a lot and very quickly so that’s not the issue, it seems she just didn’t ask in all that time. I’m sure it’s for “plot” reasons but it seems contradictory to how she behaved when he first found her. She was adamant to going back and seeing if any other humans survived… then she simply… doesn’t care anymore? Forgets? What? It’s weird.

The sex was hotter than it should have been considering this is a spider alien… but it was hot as hell. The only thing I wish would have been different is the communication, that just didn’t exist… so in my opinion there should have been a dub-con trigger warning. Trigger warnings do not ruin books and should be used more often.

I’m sure in future books their relationship will be more explored so I don’t have an issue with that being a little up in the air.

All in all, good read and I’m looking forward to the next ones.