Captured by Mary Auclair

4 Stars

The writing and editing of the ARC version of the manuscript was quite clean, with no typos or obvious sentence structure errors. The world building was really good, with the alien world our protagonists crash-land on coming to vivid life. A slight downer at the end of the novel is that the reader finds out that the hero's culture gives women absolutely no power or status in society except as a man's belonging or adjunct. The characterization was quite good, with both the hero and heroine being sympathetic. The heroine did not really come across as being believable as a top notch soldier, however. She spent way to much of the novel as a damsel in distress. The development of the romantic relationship was quite spicy, with BDSM elements that I quite enjoyed. The plot and pacing was tight and exciting, meaning I read this novel in one sitting. There was little angst in this novel and very high stakes, which tends to be one of my preferred narrative structures for a romance novel. This novel used the Enemies to Lovers trope. The world building, plot, and pacing were all four stars. The characterization was three stars and the development of the romantic relationship was four stars. The combined rating of this novel was therefore four stars. This novel ended on a Happy Ever After ending instead of a cliffhanger, so that was a big plus. I recommend this novel to readers who enjoy well written sci-fi romances with BDSM elements. I look forward to reading the next book in this series when it releases, and I will probably buy myself a keeper copy of this novel.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

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