I picked up an Amazon freebie copy of Sierra Knoxly‘s Feral Alphas, I think, during the most recent Stuff Your Kindle Day.

I’m an omega used as scent bait for feral alphas fighting in underground deathmatches.

I was told I’m an omega without a heat—a lie.

The truth? My heats were medically suppressed, and now I’ve been sold as a secret weapon in a brutal underground where feral alphas are pitted against each other in fights to the death. When the Omega Crimes Bureau raids the ring, my dream of having love with a real pack seems within reach, but freedom is never that simple.

I won’t leave my feral alphas behind, and what sane pack would accept living with two violent killers?

Meh. This was only okay. It started off well, and I expected to love it, but then it just kind of floundered. For a book called Feral Alphas, you’d think it would be a lot more focused on the actual…you know, feral alphas. They didn’t come into the story in any meaningful way until after the 65% mark, and only really one, at that. They were, At Most, side characters (the only characters without POVs, for example). This despite being part of the harem. Plus, they never reached full adult human cognizance, which made the sex scenes uncomfortable.

The rest of the men were all given super unbalanced attention, which made it feel like there were just too many of them to accommodate. I would call Colt and Luka the main pairing/main characters, not Rose, which feels strange in a reverse harem book. And Rose was very one-dimensional.

The thing is, the one-dimensionality wasn’t my biggest issue with her. My primary complaint was that she was 27 and started the book acting like an adult. AS SOON AS she found the first of her men, she read like a child. The state adopted her out like a child. She doesn’t laugh anymore; she giggles. She doesn’t walk. She skips or runs on her tip toes. She does happy dances and wiggles excitedly. She throws temper tantrums, plays uno incessantly, frequently is put down for a nap, etc. I get that she was uncultured and never lived in a normal society. But there is uneducated, and there is infantilized. She is 100% infantilized, and it’s a HUGE pet peeve for me, especially in erotic books.

I liked the characters, and the writing is readable. But when it came down to it, I didn’t like many of the authorial choices.

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@jade_reads Review of Feral Alphas by Sierra Knoxly #review #bookreview #booktok #book ♬ original sound – 📚JadeReads📚