infala the aliens bond banner

Book Review – Infala: The Alien’s Bond, by Kira Quinn

I won a giveaway for signed copies of the first three books in Kira Quinn’s Mark of the Infala series over on Sadie’s Spotlight. This week, I read the first one, Infala: The Alien’s Bond, and can happily mark Q off my yearly author alphabet challenge. Q is usually one of the last ones I manage, and every year, I say it won’t be. Well, it wasn’t a lie this year.

infala the aliens bond

As if alien abduction wasn’t bad enough, it seemed Darla’s captors didn’t want her for something as simple as breeding or even experimentation. The Raxxians were nasty pieces of work, and they had other plans in mind. Namely, they wanted to eat her, and not in the fun way. But the universe, it seemed, had other plans.

Spared a gruesome fate when the Raxxian ship crashed on a distant world, Darla found herself suddenly free. Free but on an alien planet with only the company of another former prisoner.
An alien.
A tall, muscular, impossibly alluring alien.
One who didn’t seem thrilled about taking the little human woman under his protection, at least not at first. Little did either of them know just how hot their time together on this new world would become, and in a way that had nothing to do with the planet’s blazing sun.

my review

I simply didn’t enjoy this. I disliked the heroine. She was bossy and selfish, without any personal or character growth to give it purpose. The hero was likable but about as charismatic and interesting as bologna on white bread. There really isn’t a plot beyond trekking through the woods and reacting to whatever random thing pops up. The villains are cliched rapists, though the author neither makes this relevant enough to avoid it being nothing more than low-hanging, lazy plotting nor commits to it enough to make it feel real. And the whole thing is very predictable.

I did appreciate that the bossy heroine was almost a little fem-domme-like, but I suspect that this was accidental on the author’s part. I also liked that the hero showed emotion, even crying at points. All in all, however, while I’m sure this will no doubt float some people’s boats, it didn’t mine.


Other Reviews:

storm of sin banner

Book Review: Storm of Sin, by Patricia D. Eddy

I received a signed copy of Patricia D. Eddy‘s Storm of Sin in a monthly Romance Reveal Book Box.

storm of sin cover

My crimes are legion. My sentence eternal.
Hell fractured my soul into dust and left me broken, yet I deserved so much worse.
Finally free from Lucifer’s torment, I must atone.
But the lives I took and the pain I caused haunt me every day.
Half angel, half demon, but nowhere near whole.
Until I meet her.

I should not want Zoe Dawes, but she whispers her desires in my dreams and chases away my nightmares.
When an ancient evil returns, only I can stop him. But if I do, I risk losing everything—including the woman who reminds me what it is to feel. To live.
Zoe is mine. And nothing will keep us apart.
I work for the Bureau of the Occult and the Other. Zoe is my partner.

My name is Sinclair.
But you can call me Sin.

my review

I enjoyed this well enough. The writing is readable, the editing pretty clean, and I liked the characters. There was just something missing, though. Nothing in it lit me on fire, and it is very clearly part of a series (though not labeled as such) or, at the least, a spin-off of a series. I suspect it’s a spinoff or part of the Cursed Coven series, as Maddox and Killian from Wicked Omens make an appearance. (I’ve not read it, but I was so certain Storm of Sin must be a spin-off of something that I took a dive into other Eddy books to find any obvious overlap.) While this is still followable, I felt the lack of other books.

But more than that, the plot is fairly unsubstantial. I liked the romantic aspect, but there wasn’t enough of the rest of the plot to truly suck me in. More importantly, I felt the villain and his motives were cliched. While I appreciate that the hero in this book had been traumatized in the past and was still affected by it. He was traumatized by what he was made to do, while women are consistently traumatized by what is done to them. This is an important distinction.

I often complain when reading books in this and similar genres that women are always and exclusively victims and men are perpetrators, even when the distinction doesn’t really make any sense. As in this book, if demons are bidding on the chance to abuse someone for a night (this includes rape, but isn’t limited to or even necessarily predominantly rape), why would women be the only ones? Since this perpetrator/victim dichotomy is part of our unspoken cultural storm of sin photonarrative, it isn’t unusual to encounter it. (I call it the low-hanging fruit of plotting for a reason.) But I find that sometimes you feel it more in a book than others. Eddy, here, leans pretty hard into it, and, as always, I’m generally bored with the lack of imagination it takes to write such a plotline.

So, while the book kept me amused for a few hours, it was just kind of a ‘meh, it was ok’ read for me.


Other Reviews:

bite marks banner

Book Review: Bite Marks, by Jenika Snow

I received a copy of Jenika Snow‘s Bite Marks in a monthly Supernatural Book Crate.
bite marks cover

Adryan

I was ruthless, brutal. A sociopath by all accounts. The leader of the American Vampire Clan, a male who all feared because I was merciless.

And then I found my mate. Kayla. So fragile. Breakable. So human.

I’d make her mine, and she’d hate me for it. I wanted to give her pain with pleasure, wanted to break her skin and lick up the blood I spilled… take Kayla into me like she’d take me into her.

I’d have her surrendering to my needs. I’d give her my body but wouldn’t be able to give her my heart.

How could I when it wasn’t something I had to offer, when I was nothing but a coldhearted killer?

So when the threats come to my front door, it’s time to show my female she’s mated to the most dangerous vampire in the world.

my review

Everyone seems to like Jenika Snow’s books. To each their own. But I bought several of them at some point and have yet to find a single one I particularly enjoyed. This was just drivel, as far as I’m concerned. You know how people say a nice guy won’t need to tell you he’s nice, a wealthy man won’t need to flash his cash, and a true hero doesn’t need to tell you he’s a hero? There are any number of such phrases. This is all I could think of as Adryan told everyone over and over and over again how merciless, strong, psycho, vicious, deadly, etc., he is. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Or that’s how it felt. It was as if he had to keep insisting on the fact rather than just showing himself to be scary. It felt inflated and desperate. Meanwhile, Kayla had no personality at all.

The plot was a single predictable blip, and the writing itself is unimpressive. Plus, the villain turns out to be the only LGBTQ+ character, which is hella problematic, IMO. I think I still have one Snow book on my shelf somewhere. But I also think it’s time to just accept that her writing is not for me. bite marks photo


Other Reviews: