Tymber Dalton

Waffling between 3-4 stars out of 5.

This book felt extremely emotional and fully drew me in. Mark and Dale had a beautiful relationship that I completely believed. However.

There are so many things about this one that I have a hard time wrapping my head around. Don't misunderstand, I have no problem with the kink or D/s vibes. My problem is the whole "pet" thing. The dynamic shifted weirdly between D/s master-slave sort of thing, and an actual family pet dog. I fully noped out when the author included a note at the end about the book being a tribute to her family pets. If you extrapolate to the story, it becomes about these aliens fucking and breeding their pet dogs. That being said, I think if you ignore the last couple chapters of the book, you can blissfully ignore the weird dog dynamic and enjoy a more D/s vibe instead.

Continuing on with the weird vibes. Why insist that three of the four human characters are actually straight? Obviously they have no problem with m/m sex and romance, as each of them fall in love with several other men. They even have a chance to leave this situation, but all choose to stay with the men they love. I completely understand and agree with their choice, but why still insist that they're actually straight men who just chose to enjoy the pleasure they've been provided with? Is this some sort of "turning straight men gay" kink that the author has? I guess I kinda get it, but also sexuality is such a personal and imperative thing. What if you were an earnestly gay or straight person, but someone insisted that you have sex with and fall in love with someone opposite your preference. You would feel uncomfortable, wouldn't you? This is your world, author. Just make everybody bisexual!!

All in all, this book was very enjoyable, with some pretty awesome steam. However, I had to keep performing Olympic-level mental gymnastics to work around some of the squicky vibes. And I haven't even gotten into some of the plot issues. Proceed with caution.… (mere)