Arwen has her life planned out for herself. She is going to partner with Nathan, finish her schooling and become a medic. But everything changes when she meets Makhye (Mak).

Mak is a hybrid alien who has come to Earth for a reason but he and his brother don't want anyone to know they are there so they disguise themselves. Mak and Arwen become friends but he feels more for her and wants a relationship with her.

Things seem to be going well for Arwen and she's about to be partnered with her long time friend, Nathan. But when she meets Mak, she finds she likes to spend time with him and they get along together and like some of the same things. But Mak isn't very truthful with her and doesn't tell her what planet he's from or that he's been disguising what he actually looks like. He tells her that he has feelings for her and wants her to come back to his planet with him but she isn't willing to give up her life for an alien she just met when she has her life planned out. He doesn't know how to take no for an answer and ends up pretty much stalking her day after day, wanting to talk to her and try and talk her into coming with him. She tells him no on more than one occasion but he won't take no for an answer. No means no in my mind so this was already going badly for me.

The last time he confronts her, he's attacked by other aliens but Arwen calls for help and hopes that he'll be ok. Mak has 8 brothers and they are out for blood because they are convinced that Arwen had something to do with the attack on Mak. So she is kidnapped so she can confess. But things go very wrong when one of Mak's other brothers, F'Xan loses his mind and attacks Arwen. He bites her during the attack and they don't think she'll survive because their venom usually kills those that they bite. But she lives and so they continue to interrogate her and on more than one occasion she is tortured. This story made me cringe so many times. First she's attacked and raped, then tortured, pretty much starved and tortured some more. It's only when Mak wakes up after he partially recovers from his attack that the entire truth comes to light. He and a couple of his brothers or pod mates feel awful for what they put Arwen through but somethings that even they didn't realize cold happen come to light and they realize that they want her in a romantic way. I don't know how she would or could ever trust any of them again after what she went through though. I'm not going to say how this ends because I seriously had to set aside any base in reality to even keep reading this. Frankly, my ending of her picking up a blaster and melting them all into a puddle of goo would have been better but at any rate I think you can tell that I was not pleased at all with this story. I liked Arwen, she's a fighter and some of the other characters are great. This story could have been really good without all the violence.

This is a dark romance. TW for rape, torture and kidnapping.

Disclaimer: I was given an e-ARC of this book via NetGalley but all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Big thanks to Netgalley and Regan Salander for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Set in the futuristic, dystopian Earth, post plague (probably covid?) where the world was saved, in part, thanks to alien technology provided by a race of beings new to Earth. Once exposed to one kind of alien life form, others began to show up, mixing the human and alien populations into sectors.

Arwen, a medic in training, and her best friend meet, by chance, a group of aliens. One of these aliens becomes a bit obsessed, following Arwen around, showing up places unexpected, despite Arwen being very vocal regarding her feelings and the fact she was engaged to someone else.
Eventually she is taken, tortured and almost starved while being interrogated by the group of aliens she met at the bar. She gets a bit Stockholm-y and realizes she has feelings toward a couple of them.

... this was a difficult read. The writing was good, the story line ok but it was full of domestic violence, rape, Stockholm syndrome, with a splash of OCD used only to create a more rounded character. Arwen is a character who, after saying no, accepts without question that the person she said no to isn't going to stop.

Ultimately, rating the book based solely on the writing style and quality, I think it was decent. The content however, needs a bigger trigger warning.

This review is a hard one to make. Parts of the book were engaging and others lagged. This book does have rape scene in it and it is addressed in weird/dismissive way. I found this uncomfortable and troubling given how the ending plays out. The premise of the book had promise and it was different take on alien romances. There was good world building but again the sexual assault take away from it.

4 stars for the storyline. I really enjoyed the world that Raegan Salander created. Arwen is a human living on earth in the future after the world has had 2 major catastrophes. Earth is populated with outer world beings and living conditions are hard. This story is a little rough to ready as the names and words the author uses are different. The author does have the English explanation of the words that has “*”. We are introduced to a few different species but not much details about the different species were given. The Noku are the main aliens in this story. This is not a sappy romance novel. A good read. I received an ARC for my honest review.

First thing I have to point out is that this needed to be edited better. It wasn't bad enough to really take away from the story, but it was annoyingly obvious. Second, this author did not use quotation marks to indicate when a character was speaking. They used apostrophes. And not always consistently. So there were a lot of times it was hard to tell when someone was speaking or when they stopped. And that did take away from the story.

This book was kind of an up and down one for me. The first 30% was pretty horrible because it was so boring and all of the characters are incredibly stupid for people we are supposed to believe are really smart. The middle had me completely into it wanting to find out what happens next and how things are going to progress between all these characters. But then the ending mostly annoyed me with how things worked out.

Arwen is one of few fertile women in the world. She is on her way to her medical degree and has been given approval to marry the boy she fell for when she was a child. One night her and her roommate are out at a bar when they meet a couple mysterious guys. Thinking they'd never see them again, imagine Arwen's surprise when one of them keeps showing up around her. She is dedicated to her fiance, so she friend zones him right away but they both really enjoy their time together. When he starts pushing her to leave the planet with him Arwen tries to remind him that she told him from the start that they would never be more than friends. Not an answer he wants and he turns total stalker. When he follows her down an alley as she tries to escape one night, he is viciously attacked and barely alive. Arwen didn't know it at the time, but her life will never be the same.

His brothers are out for revenge and their target is Arwen. She is kidnapped, assaulted, bit and poisoned before passing out. Only to wake inside a freezing cell with no clothes, barely fed, and trapped by walls that cause excruciating pain when touched. She has no idea what her captors want from her and the solitude is driving her mad. But things only get worse when one them tortures her for information she simply can't give. There is one alien there that Arwen does feel a connection to and he ends up being the only peace she finds. Until he doesn't believe her over something and leaves her to suffer her cruelest torture yet.

Arwen does manage to escape at some point but she is carrying a secret with her. One that she simply cannot handle on her own. One that also puts a bounty on her head and there's no way for her to protect herself. Of course she goes back to the ones who caused her suffering, but things have drastically changed now. Things escalate quickly when a traitor is revealed (one I was not expecting) and Earth is no longer safe for Arwen. By this point though, it's not a hard choice for her to go with her lovers. Ugh. Yes...plural.

The whole thing with her best friend and fiance seemed ridiculously contrived to me. There wasn't a single thing that we were told or shown that would have me believing this at all. It was pointless and annoying.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'll read the next book or not. Sure, I'm curious about what will happen in the future. But I was not happy when Arwen completed the bond with the one that was so cruel to her. I wanted her to only choose the one that had accepted her from the very beginning.

TW/CW

I would love to say that I enjoyed this dystopian, post-apocalyptic story. Unfortunately, I cannot. The premise was very intriguing and I loved all of the world building but it had a very clunky presentation. I'm personally not a fan of the stream of consciousness style, so I couldn't enjoy Arwen's chapters as much. As the heroine, I love Arwen. She's intelligent, strong, reasonably quirky and sympathetic but I found myself frustrated with the bits and pieces of information she would dole out every now and then. Sadly, I also found her naïve and unreliable as a narrator.

I felt really uncomfortable with all of the romance aspects in this book. Especially the **** scene.

TW/CW, after the rape scene I could not continue reading the novel.

After a virus which has left majority of the human females infertile, the human race is at threat in this dystopian story. Earth is now home to extra terrestrial beings and territories cut into sectors. Arwen has worked hard to go into medical research and is one of the few females who are fertile. She's also engaged to the boy she's been infatuated with since she young. Her life is going on track. What she didn't take into account is a mysterious individual who looks a lot human but is definitely different. When he's attacked when he's with Arwen and almost on the brink of death, Arwen is taken by his family to question her involvement.
The world building of this book is so detailed, we see our day to day modern advancement, along with future technology everyone dreams about. The concept of the Noku race was so different and well thought of that one can really understand where their deep connection of brotherhood comes from. Even their history is something we see that happens pretty much everywhere. History is written by the victors.
Arwen is a strong heroine, she knows which battles she can win. She isn't resigned to her fate, but knows when to accept for her own benefit. She has the power. She has made deep connections with 2 of Noku warriors, and after their initial wrongs, they both in their own way do try to win her trust back.
It is a dark dystopian romance with violence and borderline issues of consent. My view is of Non consent between the main leads. So trigger warning for that.

This book was alittle different then what I am used to. But I must say I couldn’t put it down. You have Arwen a strong heroine. When she is abducted and violated she fights for her freedom. The men that have unknown feelings for her fight to have her back. It’s a book that will hold your interest if you like suspense with erotica.


I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own

i got this book for free through NetGallery in exchange of an honest review, what else can i say, i got this book yesterday and i couldnt stop reading till i finished it.
this book has good characters and you can actually bond with arwen the main character, i only dont give full five stars because some things (characters, situations) get a bit lost in the story.
definatelly its not a book for children since it has really vivid sex scenes, and i did like it didnt drag on and we still had a story to go on. i recomend this book "Latent"

This book exceeded my expectations! The story follows Arwen, a fertile female in an age where fertility is rare, human kind are on the brink of extinction and aliens are in the position to "pick what they allow humans to have". Arwen is ecstatic to be partnered with Nathan, her long time crush who is also fertile but this is short lived as she is thrown into unexpected circumstances when she catches the eye of an Hybrid Alien. His interest in her leads to a series of events that completely changes her life and reveals knowledge that even the Hybrid Aliens did not know about themselves.

This story was steamy in parts, it was hilarious and I really loved Arwen's humour, her determination to survive as well as her forgiving spirit. The Epilogue did not really tie up the story as I expected, I was expecting to get more of Arwen and what happens to her after (or perhaps what happens when she is reunited with her mother) but instead it was about Freya. Also, it didn't mention why Freya was acting strange and avoiding Arwen in the first part of the book after they met Makhye. The book mentions that she kept disappearing and avoiding Arwen but the reason was not explained.

Trigger Warning!!
Rape
Torture