Book Review - Rescued by an Alien (Stolen by an Alien #2) by Amanda Milo
ZADEON
When my human mate was auctioned, she was sold to a savage lot of aliens.
I rescued her body from her tormentors.
But her mind…
She is hurt.
She’s afraid I will abandon her; but I’ve been waiting all my life for my mate.
I am not going to walk away. I’m going to help her heal.
And I will help her fight for us.
****Content warning: For readers 18 years and older. Contains explicit sexual situations, dark themes, sensitive subjects, and violence.
1 stars: ⭐
First things first, if I hadn’t read book one, Stolen by an Alien, I’m pretty sure I would’ve been confused as hell about what was going on in this book. It definitely feels like there are missing pages, lacking descriptive details, and context that would have helped explain things more clearly. You can’t fully rely on Callie’s perspective to provide answers, because her narration is a jumbled mess—which is understandable after everything she’s been through—but it doesn’t make it any less confusing.
With Zadeon, you’re also not given much context here about why he’s so fixated on Callie or why he keeps spraying her scent from the bottle all over himself. Since I read the first book, I remembered what happened and understood his behavior, but readers who don’t go through this series in order are going to be very lost. For that reason, I don’t think this book works as a standalone at all.
It doesn’t help that this isn’t an easy read either, and I knew that going in. Callie was repeatedly gang raped, beaten, and bitten for months by snake-like aliens. The book focuses on the aftermath—her dealing with the trauma, trying to heal, and move forward—while also attempting to build a relationship between her and Zadeon. Unfortunately, her trauma and healing weren’t written as well as I’d hoped.
It makes me happy to see women supporting each other, but most of the female interactions here were disappointing. Some of them even make light of Callie’s trauma, ignore her struggles, and even tell her to just get over it and mate with her alien, which really upset me.
I also had my suspicions going in, but I really didn’t like that pregnancy ended up happening. She’d been through enough already, and I can’t see her handling that well. It was surprising that no one sat her down and told her it was okay not to keep the baby. Her conversation with Gracie reveals that abortion is an option, but Callie doesn't ask for it. I don't know, it just doesn't feel believable to me.
Book Review - Contagion (Gennekt #2) by Amanda Milo
One OCD neat freak alien.
One human woman.
Both are abducted and held captive in a very unsterile environment.
What more could go wrong?
~
Simmi: I’ve broken free and I’ve also freed the human who was held captive with me. But I don’t know where we are, and I don’t know where my home is. The local wildlife may be smaller than I am, and maybe they don't have fangs near as large as mine, but I’m still terrified. My issues with germs--and my uncompromising avoidance of all the things that I’m afraid of coming into contact with--is going to get me killed in this wilderness.
Thankfully, Aurora lets me follow her.
Thankfully, she seems to know the way out of this endless and inhospitable woodland and desert biome.
But by the end of our journey, she’ll suspect she’s harboring a contagion. I have no way to know it, but she’s afraid to tell me. Afraid of how I’ll react once I find out what she’s carrying.
***Note: This 40K, Standalone story is intended for readers 18+ due to romantic elements and adult themes. There is no cheating. There is one really germphobic alien. Thankfully, there's also a really understanding woman who is starting to fall for him. Spoiler: They're totally gonna have a Happily Ever After... just as soon as they can get off this planet that’s trying to kill them.
5 stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I’m glad I gave this a shot. It ended up being really enjoyable. I can see why it gets recommended so often. It’s short, funny, and the first alien romance I’ve read told entirely from the alien’s perspective. Simmi, the alien lead, is a scientist who’s obsessive-compulsive and germophobic. He's basically a mix between Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory and Adrian Monk from Monk. He’s also distinctly alien, loosely resembling the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise.
This is the second installment of Contaminated. I didn’t realize that when I first read it, but knowing now, it makes sense why Simmi keeps bringing up his friend Erreck and his human mate Nancy, nicknamed Skynan. You don’t need to read the previous book to follow the story, but doing so adds a little more depth and context.
Book Review - Contaminated (Cosmic Fairy Tales) by Amanda Milo
The people of my planet are under a devastating genetic curse. To treat the disease’s effects, we’ve turned to cultivating a rare flower. That’s my occupation: raising and studying this flower. That’s precisely what I’m doing the daycycle that an alien drops into our research plot, approaches our plant… And cuts my flower’s head off, stealing the bloom.
**Note: This 37K, standalone story is intended for readers 18+ due to romantic elements. There is no cheating. There is a Happily Ever After, because this is a sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast--you have to have an HEA. (There is, however, no singing cutlery.)
***Important Note II: No unicorns were harmed in the making of this story.
----------------------
Cosmic Fairy Tales is a collaboration in which several authors are retelling beloved tales with a science fiction romance twist. Each book is a standalone, containing its own Happily Ever After, and they can be read in any order.
4 stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I read Contagion first and liked it a bit more than this one, but this came pretty close. It’s a short and simple read. Very low-risk, low-drama and cozy with just a touch of slow burn—no insta-love or insta-lust here.
The story is told entirely from the perspective of Erreck, an alien scientist whose only companion is his germaphobic and pedantic colleague, Simmi. Together, they're searching for plant-based treatments, particularly using their rare carnivorous flower, the Morsuflo, to ease the symptoms of a muscular atrophy disease affecting their people. One day, while working, they spot a never-before-seen bipedal creature approaching the Morsuflo. This “creature” turns out to be Nancy, a human, though the way Erreck and Simmi perceived her was hilarious. Their observation and reactions made her feel like the truly alien one—especially when she detached the growth on her back (a backpack) or shed her thick layer of skin (her space suit and clothing).
The only negative I can think of at the moment is that I had a hard time visualizing the aliens, since the descriptions weren’t very clear or detailed. All I could gather was that they had tails, antennae and carapaces. After finishing the book, I learned they were loosely inspired by the xenomorphs from the Aliens franchise.
Another thing I wished had been described was the baby’s appearance. Was he a perfect mix of the two species, entirely alien, or completely human?
Book Review - Stolen by an Alien (Stolen by an Alien #1) by Amanda Milo
AROKH
I broke the rules and stole an auction item from her buyers.
Because somehow, they’d managed to abduct a Gryfala princess.
Though… she doesn’t look, or act, or sound quite like I thought one of her kind would.
But I’m merely a Rakhii gladiator; this is the closest I’ve actually ever been to a princess.
I’d be considered lucky indeed if she chose me to guard her.
Instead, I want more.
I need her to claim me.
Because she doesn’t know it, but now I can’t let her go.
ANGIE
Woke up in a freaking auction pen.
With no coffee.
But there were aliens. And they didn’t bid on me out of the goodness of their hearts.
FML.
Then this nice alien showed up in the nick of time, but he keeps referring to me as “Princess” and I’m starting to worry what he’ll do when he finds out that there’s been a little case of mistaken identity, that I’m not royalty - see, I’m not even whatever alien he mistook me for…
I’m just a human.
Note to readers: This was previously titled ABDUCTED, AUCTIONED, & STOLEN BY AN ALIEN.
3 stars: ⭐⭐⭐
The story begins with Arokh finding Angie in the midst of a sexual assault. Her attackers don’t succeed in penetrating her because he intervenes before it goes that far, and I appreciated that the moment wasn’t treated lightly. Still, I wasn’t expecting the book to start off like that. To be fair, most of the stories I’ve read so far have either stop short or gloss over such moments, sometimes without even acknowledging how traumatic the experience would realistically be. This book actually handles it better than I anticipated.
I liked the story overall, but it needed more work in fleshing out the characters, building the world, tightening the plot, and cleaning up the editing. I liked Arokh, but Angie, in particular, left me feeling unsure about her character. She’s fine for the most part, but sometimes came across as annoyingly immature. We’re never given a definite age, yet I’m supposed to believe she's older and isn’t a young adult. For instance, she throws a tantrum like a child over getting a shot, when a more reasonable reaction would be to stick out her arm, grit her teeth, and look away. If she were cleverer, she might even try stalling or distracting the aliens by asking questions and hoping they’d forget.
Or when she kept screaming despite Dohrein’s constant warning her not to, because it was making Arokh react even more negatively. In that moment, I couldn’t help but think she’d only have herself to blame if he got killed—and I almost thought the story was going to take that turn, since Dohrein was unexpectedly stepping up and taking charge.
Another thing is that I don’t know if it was just me, but I found it jarring that we suddenly learn she has experience assisting goats in giving birth. What? I thought she was just the sandwich-making girl at Subway, so where did that come from? This is what I mean by the characters needing a little more fleshing out.
The writing also has small but noticeable issues, such as using “word” instead of “world,” along with other errors of that kind.
I’m hesitant to pick up book two right now, since I’m not in the mood for darker content like rape, post-assault pregnancy, PTSD, and whatnot. Callie, one of the background characters in book one, is heavily implied to have been abused and brutally raped multiple times by her captors before being rescued by Zadeon. Because of that, I expect the second book of the series, which focuses on Callie and Zadeon, to be heavy on angst and centered around a slow-burn romance, as such trauma takes time to heal from and must be handled with care.
Smiling, I shake my head at him. “You don’t give up, do you?”
Finn’s face grows too serious. I feel my spine straighten—and I watch his eyes take note of my stiffened posture. He gives me a smile, but it isn’t one of his big genuine ones. It’s tight, and a little sad. “When I want something, I throw everything I’ve got at it. And Sue?”
Staring into his eyes, I breathe, “Yeah?”
He leans in until our noses almost brush. “I want you.”
As a struggling single mom with a babysitter emergency, I’m relieved when Finn Cauley—Irish heartthrob, my boss, and my work-friend-who-I-keep-at-a-distance—takes me by the shoulders and says the four most beautiful words a stressed-out woman can ever hear:
I will fix this.
Finn proceeds to literally drag a free babysitter into our house, for which I’m super grateful, really.
I just have just one teeny, tiny concern.
Our new nanny is a *werewolf.*
One OCD neat freak alien.
One human woman.
Both are abducted and held captive in a very unsterile environment.
What more could go wrong?
~
Simmi: I’ve broken free and I’ve also freed the human who was held captive with me. But I don’t know where we are, and I don’t know where my home is. The local wildlife may be smaller than I am, and maybe they don't have fangs near as large as mine, but I’m still terrified. My issues with germs--and my uncompromising avoidance of all the things that I’m afraid of coming into contact with--is going to get me killed in this wilderness.
Thankfully, Aurora lets me follow her.
Thankfully, she seems to know the way out of this endless and inhospitable woodland and desert biome.
But by the end of our journey, she’ll suspect she’s harboring a contagion. I have no way to know it, but she’s afraid to tell me. Afraid of how I’ll react once I find out what she’s carrying.
***Note: This 40K, Standalone story is intended for readers 18+ due to romantic elements and adult themes. There is no cheating. There is one really germphobic alien. Thankfully, there's also a really understanding woman who is starting to fall for him. Spoiler: They're totally gonna have a Happily Ever After... just as soon as they can get off this planet that’s trying to kill them.
