books_ergo_sum's Reviews (933)

I’d wager it’s physically impossible to read this novella and not smile. About a hundred times.

It was scrum-did-dly-ump-tious and just delightful.

The premise was so. good.—our heroine straight up invented a husband, except the name and address she used was a real guy and I guess they’ve been married this whole time? Let’s go 😆

I loved these characters—more than that, I loved their brains. I was truly transported into the mind of someone else while reading this, and it was magical.

Spencer was such a Good Boi. Him thinking his house had been designed by a “lusty architect” because the lord and lady’s bedrooms share a dressing room just pops randomly into my head at least once a week. I loved how his POV became almost incoherent with horniness around Winnie. And his romance strategy was basically: ‘maybe if I eat her out enough, she’ll love me back.’ Of course I was cheering for him 😆

And Winnie was such a sweet yet conniving BAMF. Her mind was always planning, reaching, hustling, and she was thinking of so many things as once, it was fascinating. Her backstory and her journey was so compelling, it was impossible not to root for her.

I loved how good these two were, in different and compatible ways. And just how soft they were for each other. This book was pure sweetness. I loved it!

How does anyone create a coherent review of this book??

Second person narration (yeah, she didn’t say “I did blah blah,” she said “you did blah blah”… and meant herself 🙃) + literally the most unreliable narrator OF ALL TIME = Confusion 🤔

But in the best way possible? Not like ‘I’m confused because this writing is so bad.’ More like ‘I’m confused because this writing is so good that I’ve unlocked a new-to-me brain state.’ There is really no word for the feeling this book evokes.

This book was an.. experience. I’ve never read a book so passively in my entire life. The story was happening, and I was just hanging on for dear life.

Also, reading this as an audiobook was a trip. Absolutely recommend.

This third book in the series was very much a standalone. And at first, this made me nervous because I’d gotten so invested in the plot arc of books one and two..

Until I realized that this hero was the stupidest Himbo I’ve ever seen. Absolutely dumb as bricks. And I was living 🤣

We had:
💛 alien barbarian tribes
💛 language barrier
💛 a blonde alien hero with literally one brain cell
💛 forked tongue snake shifters (where the shifted “selves” were separate personalities inside his head)
💛 a heroine whose 🎶 name is NO, sign is NO, number is NO 

This book was just a blast and the unhinged drama had me face palming and groaning—in the best way possible.

You can’t go wrong starting with either book three or book one of this series. The worldbuilding is great, love all the little details, and the alien language words (you know I love a book that comes with a glossary). The fated mates obsession is truly unhinged. And the grittier plot points just make the grovel that much sweeter.

It hurts my heart to give this three stars.

I love this author’s writing. I love that she writes suuuper angsty interracial historical romances (this heroine was straight up racist and she had to grow, a lot). And I love how much story she packs into these short, impactful books. 

This was a (very) enemies to lovers marriage of convenience, the trope combo that I’ll never stop loving. The hate-breakfasting-together-every-morning scenes alone were making me sweat. And I loved how we we really went there with these unlikable MCs.

That said, I had two issues with this story.

The first is an element of my own hypocrisy: I LOVE enemies to lovers, the more hate the better—but I don’t love hate Fing. If you love people getting it on out of pure malice, this book is for you. But it was beyond my personal angst limit.

The second thing had to do with the hint of BDSM in here. We had some some degradation kink, they both had brat energy, and they were fairly switch-y about it (there was a very compelling scene where she went FemDom on him and I loved to see it). 

I actually had two problems with this part of their sexual relationship. First, it all happened during the hate Fing and, though it should have felt like a “How NOT To Kink” tutorial, it was written in a hot way. Which I didn’t love.

And also, the story was missing a very crucial scene: a post “I love you” resolution to their hateful-yet-kinky dynamic. Because I genuinely don’t know if this was a ‘kink cured by love’ plot (which almost always results in a one star from me) or if they continued their kinky dynamic into their HEA (which would have been great, especially if we saw that transition on-page).

I’m still very excited to read more from this author and I especially want more books in this series!

Am I really going to take a star off my rating because they kept referring to sexy times as “going to the garden,” “being in the garden,” “I’m in the garden”…? Yes, yes I am.

But other than that! Great book.

I particularly love how this author explores racism in her alien romances—and this was the best one so far. Just a completely bananas mixture of unhinged fated mates pining and an alien guy’s horror and self-loathing at being mated to someone not of his species. Seriously, it was a lot.

Also, rejected mate stories (she rejects him because he’s being such a racist jerk) are just so angsty. Loved it!

This gets a star from me for the honourable Highlander guy plus marriage of convenience. But that’s it.

The rest was all pretty meh…
▪️ the mid-16th century setting was giving more late-18th century-ish? (emphasis on the ish). There was nary a bonnet to be seen, let alone a French hood, and where all the puffed sleeves?
▪️ our heroine was Mary Sue-ing it up a bit too much for me 
▪️ was that a mystery subplot?
▪️ I don’t think this couple was particularly compatible. They were too similar; both giving stern eldest sibling with a dash of withholding information
▪️ there was remarkably little on-page falling in love. I guess we were more focused on that mystery plot…
▪️ and the thing I disliked most was how the expository dialogue was… definitely expositing. We were putting important story beats in the mouths of characters a bit too ham-fistedly for me

Also didn’t help that the audiobook narrator read the FMC like the guy who plays Pippin in LOTR 🙈

Also also, I don’t know anything about Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. But other reviews mentioned this book was a retelling of that… and this is the second much-beloved book compared to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers that I didn’t enjoy. So it’s probably just a me-thing.

Such an excellent culture clash story! 

The premise of this alien romance was that these MCs had basically been talking on the phone 24/7 for a year before the book began. And we STILL had culture clash. It was amazing.

These MCs were really cute, their romance was adorable, and there were so many wholesome male friendships on the sausage-fest that was this alien pirate spaceship.

If only we’d had more on-page flashbacks to their phone conversations. I felt robbed of the cuteness.

Is there a better phrase in romance than “I see you” 😍

You know what I love? When a new-to-me-author knocks it out of the park.

This was the premise: our musical genius heroine’s original plan (pretend to be a mousy wallflower until she she could age out of the marriage market and play her piano as a spinster in peace) wasn’t going to work. So she needed a husband pronto—one sweet and dumb husband in particular. And who better to help but his “I’ll never get married” rakish friend who was secretly obsessed with her… and absolutely not going to jealously undermine her plans 😅

There was a lot to love here. Our heroine’s musical brain made her an interesting POV. Our MCs had so much chemistry and I loved that our hero also loved music. And I just have a soft spot for heroines who are trying to be free. 

But the best parts were:
🤍 the mess
🤍 the angst
🤍 the way this hero 1000% effs up
🤍 “I see you"

I loved this!

We had:
🤍 Space pirates
🤍 Stabby heroine + cinnamon roll hero (with a twist)
🤍 Fated mates
🤍 Aphrodisiac saliva
🤍 Cool female alien side characters (there are criminally too few of these in other books tbh)

The tone of this book perfectly thread the mood-needle I was in (you don’t even want to know how many alien roms I DNFed before this one). We had some action and emotion but mostly it was all about really compatible characters being super soft for each other. My heart.

The worldbuilding was great—these aliens were planet-less space refugees with an interesting culture and political situation that I’m looking forward to exploring more in the other books.

And this couple’s dynamic was really unique. On the one hand, we had a classic stabby heroine + cinnamon roll hero couple. Raina was loyal, aggressive, and kicked alien butt. And Niko was a charming and smirky pirate, always the first person voting for Raina to be included in (even in charge of) dangerous situations (and more than a little excited by her tying him up at gun point).

Yet on the other hand, Niko’s crazy fated mate horny brain would go into bossy boots mode. And Raina was into it, and Niko made sure she was into it. So their whole vibe was switch-y, the dirty talk was 🔥, the consent was 🔥🔥, and I was rooting for them so hard.

oh my… okay, this is my new favourite book in this series.

The chokehold that this book had on me (also the chokehold that a certain someone had on a certain someone else 👀)

We had:
🖤 A baddy hero
🖤 Unhinged stalker hero level 100 with a labyrinth of secret tunnels and a two-way mirror (seriously, who have this guy a two-way mirror?)
🖤 Angsty enemies to lovers marriage of convenience except oh no I’m falling for her and that turns me into an absolute nutcase
🖤 Fangs and biting
🖤 A unique alien tattoo culture and an artistic heroine who missed her tattoos from earth 
🖤 A vibrating tail
🖤 Slow burn (there was too much crazy to unpack for this not to be slow burn 😆)
🖤 Oops, we’re fated mates 

So, first of all, this book was effing hot 🥵 

And also, this was my favourite kind of Victoria Aveline story. It was the kind where whatever urges are going on behind their fated mates-ness turn them (the hero especially) into horny and emotionally unstable drama-llamas. 

Intense gazes, paranoid mistakes, adventure, and delicious grovels. If Choosing Theo is your favourite in this series, I bet this one is going to be your new favourite.

I received this as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.