jurnee_reads's reviews
325 reviews

My favorite of this entire series so far!

This pairing in it’s simplest form is just opposites attract and that always gets me going. Iris with her fearful nature and Alyvos with his aggressive nature balance each other out so well. I also think that Alyvos finds some purpose in protecting Iris in a way that he didn’t find with constantly fighting. He was fighting for some sort of release… and he doesn’t need that now.

Iris’ growth through out the book is also great to watch. Seeing her learn a new world through all over her senses except sight was painful and in its own way beautiful. I feel like she found herself after having lost parts of herself when she was abused by her abductors.

Just a great read, really loved it!

Good story with a sweet ending, I definitely enjoyed myself.

It was cute and interesting… at first. Since I’ve read the other book in the universe I understand the world, so none of my issues with this book was the quick pace, what really got me what how Sierra changed in the epilogue and Quist just… didn’t do much. It was odd. I liked that they talked things out, but getting to that point was a rough ride.

Good idea but badly executed. Feels like a first time writer took ideas from a handful of alien/monster romance books and put this together. Just not well done and there is so much more out there that is much better.

At about 50% I just skipped around, not caring much about what was happening… it was just hard to get through.

Gunner is overbearing and slightly frightening, he holds an air of danger that is intriguing and arousing. While he can be over protective and sometimes even aggressive, he also knows when to be gentle for Elodie’s sake. When he watched her sleep was probably the cutest moment for him.

Elodie is a complex and complicated character that I deeply enjoyed. The fact that she has to hide as a man isn’t something I can relate to, but I sort of took it as her hiding her true self from the world, which I think we can all relate to. She starts out the story very passive and frightened, but she turns into a bit of a bad ass by the end of it. One of my favorite female leads of this series.

The story does feel little bit slow, that’s why I didn’t give it five stars, but it was interesting to watch things through Gunner’s point of view because he always seem to be actively fighting for his freedom which made things exciting. Elodie’s point of view was much more emotional, and felt like it was a dive into the psyche of someone dealing with trauma.

Great book, great characters, hot sex scenes, really enjoyed it.

Not much I want to say about this because I didn’t really enjoy it. Didn’t really like either lead. 2 stars instead of 1 simply for Lily, Gunner, and the fact that I love this author’s writing style. This just wasn’t my kind of story.

The start of their relationship really bothers me, feels a little rapey. The only saving grace is that it doesn’t really bond them because Toagi has to actively give himself to Ceangal before a real bond is formed. He had to put in the hard work to form an emotional bond before she would accept the forced bond and want to actually be intimate with him. I do think it was done like this because Ceangal would never actually bond with someone by choice due to her experiences and her own lack of emotional intelligence, so she’s basically put in a situation of force proximity with the added touch of forced comfort to smooth things over.

I like Ceangal a lot, I find her story interesting and her motivations believable. Toagi on the other hand frustrated me quite a few times. He really used her like a pawn and didn’t think about that until it was thrown in his face, he seemed a little heartless and nearsighted in the beginning of the book. Thankfully he gets better.

I enjoyed Mayala and Yelim’s romance a bit more than that of the leads.

The best part of the book was the world the author created. I wanted to learn more about the different warlords and their customs and their histories, so I hope the series explores more about that.

Very well written! I enjoyed learning about these characters and want to see more of them so I can’t wait to continue the series. The sex scenes were great as well!

I’ve already read the first book, since this is a prequel, and I’d say it’s better to read this one after Stolen by the Warlord. The world is explored better in book 1 than in this prequel so it’s helpful to have an idea of what the world is like when stepping into this book.

What this book does so well is in the poetic nature of how the themes of family, love, loss, and the beauty of life are explored. The wording is just beautiful and really lends to mystical feel of the alien world/society. The last 20% of the book really guts you and puts you back together better than before.

Jessica is a likable character and quite relatable for me. She, like most people, wants with all her heart to belong in a family and to have her own soulmate, something completely possible in this universe. She does need to do a little soul searching to really understand what that looks like, but her heart is so open and welcoming that she doesn’t even have to try to belong in the tribe.

Though Katedo takes longer to come around due to his own past trauma, he really shows up when it counts. He’s been without a partner for such a long time that it seems he doesn’t even know how to be with someone at first. But Jessica quickly has him wrapped around her finger, and nothing is better than a man obsessed with his woman. He has to do some growing near the end that I appreciate seeing in male characters.

2.5⭐️

The story is written like a race that someone is desperate to win... brings the quality down quite a bit. The instalove doesn’t bother me but the way it was handled does. Mercy doesn’t even respond when he calls her his mate. They could have at least had one conversation about it. They also don’t talk at all about being physical before she just… grabbed him. I’d just prefer a little more communication, any communication would have been nice.

One good thing is that as the first book in the series it leads on for the following books really well, so I am going to try to read those. These seem like short stories so they’ll be easy to get through even if I don’t really like them. But I’ll give them a chance! Hopefully the new couples actually talk to each other a little.