Is it weird that I wish the kidnapping had occurred later in the story?

I saw the title. I saw the cover. I knew we were going to have a kidnapping + tied to the bed moment. And we did! And it was a fairly wholesome kidnapping, my favourite.

Pre-kidnapping, this book was unputdownable. It was a bit wordy, but I forgave it because there was a lot to set up with this ‘undercover alien on earth looking for a human mate’ story. And when he found her, the ‘trying to be cool but he keeps being so weird’ plot was adorable. Plus he was super swoony.

Post-kidnapping (aka most of it), this book felt veryy putdownable, unfortunately. It continued to be wordy, when I didn’t think it needed to be. The plot felt unnecessarily drawn out with a combo of miscommunication and arbitrary time limits. There wasn’t much alien-human culture clash. And how much forced proximity versus how little these two got to know each other on-page was kind of mind boggling. In a bad way.

Basically, it was 400+ pages and I thought it dragged. But I’m still going to read from this author duo again.