books_ergo_sum's Reviews (933)

This was.. extremely well-written? I went into this expecting some KU alien smut (which I got) but I didn’t expect this.. literary excellence?

The premise: our human lady, criminal profiler and behavioural psychologist Olivia, abducted from earth by alien special forces for some top secret mission stuff and things. Alien-human first contact. Culture clash. Criminal minds-y plot amazing-ness.

And la pièce de résistance: a delicious ‘falling for my partner’ romance as Olivia worked closely with Commander Atarian—with some particularly spicy sexual tension as she taught him about human sexuality but they tried to stay professional. Oh, and some alien mates goodness.

The characters were amazing. The competence kink of this heroine was making me feel all the feelings. Her profiler brain was such an interesting POV and her thoughts were so well expressed—loved her. And this tortured hero was tying me up in knots! He was so cool.

This was the best sci-fi world building I’ve ever encountered in an alien romance. You know those extremely rare fantasy romances where the fantasy setting and plot is just as good as the best non-romantic fantasy, plus it’s romance plot is just as good as the non-fantasy romance? Well, this book was the sci-fi version of that.

And you know what I find thrilling? When a book has an unexpected plot structure. Events were happening.. not at the %-mark of the book they usually happen at? And when a book can pull this off, I’m such a goner—the book fully takes control of my reading experience. I stop overthinking, stop trying to guess the twists, and I just enjoy.

I was still so jazzed about loving book one that I dove into this story ready to enjoy it—what I didn’t expect was how much I would freaking love this. Particularly the way this story deepened the alien-human first contact plot line and how emotional I felt about our couple navigating their first relationship hurdles together.

I just love the culture clash of an alien-human relationship and I feel like this alien romance series is the first one that’s really quenched my thirst for this trope. If it’s the first relationship between an alien and a human in the universe, I want it to be complicated!

Book two was the same couple as book one, but it’s not a duet. Book one had the standard HEA ending and book two was more of an extended epilogue.

These two just love each other so much. My heart!

Did Martin Scorsese direct this book?? Because… holy crap. The chokehold that this book had on me… Is this book drugs?

A KU alien smut book has ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS being this well-written. I’m just trying to have a fun little time over here; not get sucked into an engrossing, page-turning, unputdownable, stay-up-all-night-reading alien romance MASTERPIECE. Okay?? 

Just a “doctor lady human abducted from earth, settling into her safe-haven space-colony with the other abducted humans because they can’t return to earth, flirting with her hot alien doctor coworker” story? I DON’T THINK SO. This book was so twisty. The plot was completely blowing my mind. The romance was just.. 😳🥰

Plus, the man had four arms and also tentacles.. wherever your mind just went—the answer is yes 🥵

The world building was excellent, again. The characterization—out of this world. Even something as simple as how Swiss German our heroine was; the cadence of her dialogue, her mannerisms, the way she approached her work as a doctor.. everything.

This book was SO INSANELY GOOD that I’m really struggling here. 

Yeah, I loved the rascal alien who charms everyone, except he’s been pining for a human heroine who doesn’t have a clue. Yeah, I loved how compelling our alien hero’s insecurities were. Yeah, I loved how ridiculously compatible these two MCs were..

But this book was so much more than excellently executed tropes. It was the way common alien romance world-building elements (like an alien society with fewer women than men or alien matehood making peeps super horny for each other) were.. taken to the next level? Taken to their logical conclusion? Thoroughly and consistently applied to all aspects of alien social dynamics and psychology?

It was the way this author plots out these stories. The plot progressed the way a professional driver shifts gears—no forcing, no hiccups, until you’re driving 250km/h and you CANNOT STOP READING.

How did this book go from literally, actually, for-real for-real the cutest most heartwarming date I’ve ever read in any romance book.. to the most 😳 holy shitballs story of all time?? Smooth as butter, that’s how.

THIS. BOOK.

Okay, first of all—the world-building and overarching plot of this series is beyond. If these books weren’t super steamy KU alien roms, I would bet serious money that they’d be getting nominated for a Hugo Award. Or something 😂 Because no joke, this sci-fi plot is… I have no words. 

But then the romance melts me into goo every time. This romance plot so closely tracked this couple’s compatibility, their character growth, their enemies to lovers deliciousness… my heart!

Here’s a little fact about my own hypocrisy: I can be loving a romance series, five stars across the board, but you’ll almost always see me giving the book with this kind of couple (let’s call them the Nesta-Cassian couple) four stars. Idk, something about these cranky heroines.. there’s always a moment where I’m a bit annoyed—like, c'mon you’re the heroine of a romance, open up already! And their love interests are almost always written either too bossy or too not-bossy. Something is always off, to me at least.

But this couple! Perfection. Imani made perfect sense, I completely emphasized with her at every moment, and I never felt impatient. And Vin! This guy was being so stoic, but so beg-y, so vulnerable, so masculine but also so submissive—oof 🥵

No thesis statements, just vibes.

This was a really unique philosophy text: it was Arendt covering Adolf Eichmann’s Nazi war crimes trial in Israel for The New Yorker in 1961. It was grounded, impactful, and percipient—and contains one of the most important insights of our time: that ‘monsters’ aren’t the biggest baddies.

Eichmann was quoted as saying: "I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have 5 million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction.” 😬 yeah…

So when he was put on trial, everyone expected a sadist, a psycho, and a raging anti-Semite—a monster. And they expected it so much that that’s the report that was widely circulated at the time.

Except he wasn’t. And Arendt focused instead on how normal, average, even decent (!) he was—with so much detail from the trial and other facts about the “Final Solution” that this book was chillingly unputdownable.

And it marked a shift in her philosophical thinking. From investigating total evil to her famous concept of the “banality of evil.” 

Because what does it say about the power of totalitarian ideology when the biggest baddies of all time are… just normal guys?

Also the audiobook is really good.

This hit me right in the feels. And it was kinda trope bending? 

On paper, it was a second chance romance. Lockwood and Anna fell for each other and got married the old fashioned way (you know, an impoverished peer and an heiress marriage of convenience where they secretly loved each other). The past parts of this dual timeline where they were falling for each other warmed my cold dead heart. Then just after the wedding, Lockwood was accidentally (or on purpose? 👀) sent to a penal colony in Australia for FOUR YEARS, without anyone knowing. Then he was back. Hence, the second chance. 

But, then it also felt like an actual marriage of convenience? Something about the way they were married but super di-duper awkward post-their four year estrangement was giving me angsty MoC vibes—particularly of the ‘I’m in love with my wife but we’re not supposed to like each other and seeing her every day is crushing me into dust’ variety. My favourite 😈

Loved how, when we boiled down to it, the conflict was simple yet impactful. Loved how grounded the plot felt—in the historical setting, in the personalities and backstories of these MCs, and in the crazy inciting incident. And I loved how they were both kinda baddies, but also kinda goodies.

It was angsty, there was some gaslighting that was hard to read, and the bedroom times were less sexy, more 😳 because they were happening mid-character-arc. But still, this story was too impactful to get anything less than five stars from me.

Dang, a three star rating really does not capture the fire that this book lit in me. Because time travel romance?? I’m now obsessed!

All of the bowing hand-kisses of a historical romance, plus Scottish brogue, plus.. can we agree that the ‘modern lady travels back in time and falls in love with a kilt and bandolier wearing guy’ story is similar to the ‘human lady abducted from earth falls in love with a barbarian alien guy’ story? 

Obviously this trope is perfect for me.

The time travel trope, plus how hot Jamie Fraser—sorry, Colin MacKinnon 😅—was, made this an addictive and enjoyable read!

But, I wish we’d made more hay with the culture clash. I don’t think historical accuracy is an end in itself, but I do like when historical accuracy increases the drama. Some historical elements were off—with the result that our heroine settled in too easily to life in the past. Plus the romance plot felt modern, when it could have been bonkers (bonkers is better).

I was ready to forgive the modern-feeling historical times because the tone of the book was giving me fun and campy, ‘don’t think about it too hard.’ But then it had (kinda randomly, I thought) some of the darkest plot stuff… like child r-word-ist baddies, a homicidal triad baddy, a dark triad r-wordy baddy (did we need that many baddies?). I feel like we could have skipped the narrated flashbacks that made even more of the badness on-page... If everything about this book had been realistically dark and gritty, then that would have worked. But it didn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the story, imo.

But it’s a testament to how entertaining the time travel was—not to mention how hot our historical hero was—that I had as good of a time as I did with this one.

Alien instalove can be fun. Fated mates who are confused by how horny they are for each other? I normally eat that up. 

But I guess I have a limit? Because this was my limit.

Maybe it was how insta this instalove was? Maybe I got tired of the MCs thinking ‘why am I so obsessed with him/her’ on every single page? Maybe it was how obvious and forshadow-y the plot progression was? Maybe it was how illogical their character motivations felt?

Idk.. I just didn’t care. And as every new thing introduced (their alien city and culture, different alien interpersonal conflicts, rules about mates, etc) was added to the ‘don’t care’ pile.. I had to knock this down to two stars.

I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum. This book is much-beloved! If you love this book, you are in excellent company. 

I thought I would love it too… turns out I didn’t. I didn't connect with it, put it down. Any other book, I'd have quietly DNFed and never thought about it again. But it blew up on booksta, I second guessed myself, finished it, and here I am.

What I liked:
▪️ The dragons were fine.
▪️ The sexual tension, kinda. If I squinted.

What I didn’t like:
▪️ The narration. First person present tense should feel immediate, but this felt distant and story breaking. Apparently present tense time lapse montages are a thing. And info-dumping directly to reader in this tense.. was I the Ghost of Christmas Present?
▪️ The entire romance plot. First a love triangle I wanted to yeet into the sun. Then “enemies to lovers” aka instalust between characters who don’t hate each other, do nothing bad to each other, and help each other all time, aka NOT ENEMIES TO LOVERS. Then bam, the MCs getting together still managed to feel sudden.
▪️ The setting. AITA for thinking a fantasy kingdom called Navarre should be about irl Navarre? Yet this wasn’t a Basque culture-inspired fantasy? The world was that non-descript liminal fantasy setting I despise. Disappointing.. and insensitive?
▪️The heavy-handed foreshadowing. It hinted so hard at everything that the reveals came pre-spoiled. And the ending was too predictable!
▪️ The characters. We barely scratched the surface of their one-dimensionality.
▪️ The dialogue. It was awkward and mostly exposition for the reader.
▪️ The character deaths. Not only did I feel nothing, the book couldn’t decide if the deaths were a Big Deal or just another Tuesday at death school. Plus, it made no sense: elite fighters or cannon fodder, gotta pick one. And I needed more background ideology to justify peeps risking their lives to this extent.
▪️ The plot. Beyond the repetitive and boringly deadly micro-plots (Parapet, Gauntlet, Presentation, Threshing, Squad Battle, War Games..), there wasn’t enough of a macro-plot to sustain the story. Also, the plot holes.
▪️ The names. Character names are my favourite fantasy culture vectors. So this name salad was killing me.
▪️ And is it just me, or did the queer side characters feel tokenized?

I thought this would be a perfect book for me—I love adult fantasy romance. But the fantasy elements weren’t as complicated as I’d expect from adult fantasy, and the romance plot didn’t hit like my favourite adult romances can. It was fantasy-light and romance-light, when I wanted fantasy and romance-max.

Again, most people love this book. And if you’re one of them, we can still be friends right??