The Heiress and the Orc by Finley Fenn

4 Stars

This novel was lyrically written and very well edited, with no typos or wrong word choices at all. The world building of this erotic fantasy romance was excellent, with Orc Mountain being a vibrant character in itself. The characterization of the hero and heroine was also excellent, with both of them being vibrant, sympathetic characters. The development of the romantic relationship between these two characters was amazingly well done, with the emotional high points and low points in this romance bringing a big smile to my face, in the case of the emotional high points, and actually bringing me to tears, at the emotional low points, which almost never happens to me when reading romance novels. The pacing was excellent, with me reading this novel in one sitting and looking up at the end to discover that most of the afternoon had passed me by. The spicy scenes were incredibly erotic and well written, with this novel occasionally being a one-handed read for me. This novel would have been a five star read for me except the one weakness in this novel, which was the plot development. I saw the plot solution to the main conflict in this novel when I was 20% into the novel, which none of the characters saw until at least 90% of the way through this novel. That was the one blot on an otherwise excellent fantasy romance. I highly recommend this novel to readers who enjoy fantasy or sci-fi romance with monstrous or quite alien heroes. This romance uses a fantasy variation of the Mars Needs Women trope and also the Mate Bond trope, which is a variation of the Fated Mates trope.

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