Claiming An Alpha's Heart by A. R. Ford

3 Stars

The writing and editing of this m/f omegaverse was a little rough, with a few incorrectly constructed sentences and typos per page in the ARC version of this manuscript. The world building not great, with this dystopian world and society not being very well described, and some of the descriptions that were there were somewhat confusing. The characterization was poorly done, with the heroine especially seeming to have a strange animal-like fixation on shiny things and emotional reactions many times being consistent with the processing ability of a toddler. It was jarring for me, as the reader, to read this in an adult woman. The development of the romantic relationship was also rough, with this heroine falling in love with this hero when he is abusing her and viciously mistreating her. It seemed strange that the heroine would fall in love with him at that point in the story instead of after he turned over a new leaf and was trying to show her that he wanted to be a good mate. My preferred form of dark romance is when it uses a variation of the Enemies to Lovers trope, where the heroine fights against the hero's mistreatment at the beginning. This novel did not take advantage of that opportunity. The plot and pacing was somewhat uneven, with the heroine conveniently stumbling upon the solution to a plot problem multiple times, which struck me as somewhat lazy writing. This novel has surprisingly low angst for a dark romance, and the stakes are very high, as the Alphas are trying to defeat One World. However, I could not figure out how One World and the current governing structure interacted, or how old the organization was. The explanations for how One World fit in this dystopian world and the plot were pretty poor. This book contained the Mating Bond trope common to omegaverse romance, and the Virgin and the Bad Boy trope. The world building was two stars. The characterization and development of the romantic relationship was three stars. The plot and pacing was three stars. Therefore, I was generous and rounded up the combined score of this novel to three stars. This novel ends on a Happy Ever After ending instead of a cliffhanger, so in that respect, it is better than a lot of m/f omegaverse romance novels that end on cliffhangers. I recommend this novel only to readers who want to add another dark m/f omegaverse romance without a cliffhanger ending to their already read pile. I do not plan to 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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