Alien Outlaw's Captive by Viki Storm

4 Stars

This novel was written and edited pretty cleanly, with only a few typos that I caught in the ARC version of this manuscript. The world building was competent, but readers new to this series may be a little lost if they come into this book having not read any other books in this series. I do not recommend new readers start with this book. The characterization in this novel was competent, with both hero and heroine being sympathetic well-drawn individuals. The development of the romantic relationship was fairly natural and organic, though the abundance of plot took away some from the development of the romance. The plot and pacing was exciting, with me turning the pages rapidly to find out what was going to happen next. There was very little angst in this novel and incredibly high stakes, which tends to be one of my preferred narrative structures for a romance novel. This novel used the Fated Mates trope, the Mars Needs Women trope, the Enemies to Lovers trope, and had a hint of the Breeder trope so popular in sci-fi romances. The world building was three stars. The plot and pacing were four stars. The characterization and development of the romantic relationship were four and three stars, respectively. I went ahead and rounded up and made the final score four stars, because I did enjoy the reading experience quite a bit. This novel ends on a Happy Ever After ending instead of a cliffhanger, so that is a big plus to this entire series so far. I recommend this novel to readers of sci-fi romances who enjoy the Fated Mates trope, and romances that read like adventure novels. I will not be buying myself a keeper copy of this romance, though I did enjoy it quite a bit. I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

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