I’d seen Tiffany Roberts‘ Ensnared all over Tiktok. So, I gave in and bought a copy.

He’s spent years as a hunter, but now he’s the one ensnared in a creature’s trap.

Ketahn did not want a mate. Fate has a different plan for him. When the queen he despises declares her intention to claim him, he retreats into the jungle.

What he finds there changes his world.

Small, delicate, and pale skinned, Ivy Foster is nothing like the females Ketahn has known. She’s not of his kind at all. Yet the moment he sees her, he knows the truth in his soul—she is his heartsthread.

And now that he has her, he won’t let anything take her away. Not the jungle, not the gods, not the queen and her warriors.

Whether Ivy agrees or not, their webs are entangled. No one will ever sever those threads.

Meh, this was fine. The writing is perfectly readable. It hits a lot of the expected monster smut expectations. But there just isn’t really anything particularly new or interesting about it. I was bored with a lot of it. Roberts sets up an interesting world, culture, and species (the gender dimorphism especially) and then ignores it all to spend most of the book in basically one small room with two characters doing domestically dull things. (Even the smut can’t rescue the plot when it comes in at 85% and is itself uninspiring.) What’s more, I’m just tired of the jealous-other-woman as the villain in such books. *Yawn.*

But I think I was also bored because I read this back to back with Opal Reyne’s A Soul to Keep, and there is so much overlap between the two books that (when the same phrase was even used) I actually flipped to the cover to double check they weren’t written by the same author and I’d not noticed. Now, I grant that Ensnared was published first (and I gave them the same rating), but that doesn’t lessen my boredom at feeling like I was practically reading the same book over again. (Plus, it ended on a cliffie.)

All in all, I’d probably finish the series out if I could pick it up as a freebie. But I don’t think I’d buy the next one.

Other Reviews:

*REVIEW* – Ensnared: The Spider’s Mate #1, by Tiffany Roberts

What is Quinn Reading: Spider Mate Trilogy