Bound to the Alien Engineer

Alien Brides Series, Book 2

By: C.V. Walter

Narrated by: Rebecca Estrella

Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Mindy's best friend Molly was a maintenance technician on the Bradbury 12. When Molly went missing, Mindy started looking for answers but all she found were more questions. They were supposed to meet up at Geniuscon, a science fiction convention that attracts people from every walk of life, and she knows Molly's son Aidan is going to be there. Determined to get in touch with her friend, Mindy tracks down Aidan and meets some of his new friends, the guys cosplaying as big, blue aliens.

The first time he heard her voice, Alvola knew Mindy was the one. It didn't matter that he couldn't understand the language or touch her skin, the sound of her voice made his body sing. Determined to meet his mate, Alvola volunteers for the mission to Earth to pick up Aidan and meet with the scientists and engineers that will be their first official contacts with humanity. When Alvola actually meets Mindy in person, his mission becomes to keep her by his side, no matter the cost.

Contains mature themes.

©2021 C.V. Walter (P)2021 Tantor

Disjointed and thin; random domestic violence

The first book was ok, but this one I didn’t even want to finish (I did because I spent the credit, but I had lost interest in the characters and story). It was disconnected and thin. (The violence is addressed towards the end of this review, for those that want to read that far.)

This book felt like the author was just trying to introduce a whole lot of characters that will star in later books, maybe. There were details that were random and didn’t make sense with other details, like the author just added things on a whim with no consideration of if they made sense with the rest of the character’s actions/personality/etc. Other details felt like private jokes or trying to show off some inside knowledge of comic conventions. (ComicCon doesn’t NOT automatically equal genius, and vice versa - that was just a poor leap in logic.)

Random BDSM contract - where did that come from, character-wise? Again, aspects seem to just be on a whim. Or added after the fact in a strange attempt to make something that is not ok sound acceptable (more below). Too many new characters all at once, so it was hard to keep track of them all. It just felt like a buffet of details rather than a careful planned multi-course meal.

As there was more focus on the overall story arc, rather than the story of these two characters, their relationship was a minimal aspect of the plot and was little more than attraction straight into marriage two days later with a brief contrived misunderstanding to create “conflict”, which was dealt with with unreasonable violence. Even if it is the woman hurting the man, violence in a relationship is not healthy! Violence is NOT how a main character should be dealing with conflict, ever! Even if it is the woman, it’s still domestic violence!

Spoiler as content warning:
She hears a piece of information and instead of asking him what is going on, she stabs him! She seems like a fairly rational person up until that moment of random domestic violence. No matter their healing abilities or some contract, her violence against him is beyond acceptable. Not that hitting is ok, but, it’s not like she’s slapping him, it’s attempted murder! The writer tries to justify it, but no, it’s not justifiable.

Stabbing someone in anger or pain is NOT an acceptable action in the BDSM lifestyle. It is inappropriate, and shows a total ignorance of BDSM on the author’s part, that the author tries to rationalize the domestic violence by putting it in this contract a couple of scenes earlier.

The BDSM is so sudden, unexpected, and makes so little sense with the characters’ development up until that point, that it is clear the author is just trying to make an excuse for her poor choice in how to add conflict within the relationship. So many better ways it could have been done.

Narrator was fine. Nothing stands out as bad, but not standout either, so 4 of 5 stars for her. She didn’t write the book, just did her job of reading it.