![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Review: Strange Love, by Ann Aguirre
Mar. 7th, 2021 11:05 pmVenturing out of my histrom corner, this book had such good buzz in a number of places I trust that I decided to take a chance, and lemme tell you: NO REGERTS!
Our hero, Zylar, is an alien who has failed at his people's mate-choosing ceremony enough times that he's on his last chance. Through a series of unplanned events, he accidentally abducts human Beryl Bowman, of St. Louis, and her dog, Snaps. Once he's managed to find tech that allows them to speak to each other--which he outfits Snaps with, as well, not being aware that, you know, humans and dogs don't actually understand each other as a matter of course--he explains the situation to Beryl. At the moment, because of computer failure, he can't get her back to earth. Beryl takes this fairly gamely and decides to go ahead and participate in the ceremony, see how things turn out while they're trying to find a solution to getting her back to earth.
Zylar is a fucking cinnamon roll hero, which I'm pretty consistently down for. He's got super low self-esteem when we meet him due to years of what would be considered emotional abuse by family in a human society. He's also a virgin because of how their society controls sex, although it plays differently in this book, since that's considered normal.
Beryl is a roll-with-the-punches girl. Like, almost a little too much, until later on? Although some of that can be put down to shock. She's considered primitive by Zylar's species, but through her completely different way of thinking about things and willingness to make allies, does incredibly well in the trials.
Meanwhile, spending time with someone who treats him well and values him for who he is--which, for the record, is pretty great--is building Zylar up into a healthy being, a guy who is in a good place to be a partner.
The world building in this book is interesting without being intrusive, Snaps as a character is both hilarious and bone-deep enjoyable, the main characters are fantastic and a few of the side characters are great as well, including Kurr the plant-alien. The villain of the piece is pretty one-note and basically a straight up meditation on the dangers of unchecked privilege, but he's not really the point, so that didn't bother me.
The two things that do bother me are this: one, the society that Zylar is part of has some seriously dark, post-apocalyptic, hierarchical shit going on, and it kind of just hangs out all throughout the book, ever-present, never really addressed. Two, due to this, there is surprise!character death to spur a plot point, and while normally I'd be like "okay, I see why A had to happen to have B happen," this is a romance novel, so it honestly felt a tiny bit like the covenant was broken. In general, I feel as though there are certain elements that leave a stain on the presumptive HEA, and these two sort of did.
Another extremely minor issue I had was that while we got to know Zylar extremely well, including his past and his motivations, I felt like Beryl was something more of a question mark. I know she's somewhat athletic and that she has hair long enough for a pony-tail. I know she's from St. Louis and has no family. Later on, in what feels like a poorly-planned info drop, I learn about her family life in about a paragraph of narrative text. But she doesn't have the same development that Zylar has, and I wish she did.
That being said, I would still whole heartedly recommend this book. It's the first in a trilogy, so part of me wonders if at least element one of my concerns gets cleared up later on. Plus, it's hilarious, heart-warming, the characters are super easy to root for, they make good decisions based on the information they have at any given time, they are honest and communicative with each other even when it's not easy, and in general, this is a peach of a book.
Our hero, Zylar, is an alien who has failed at his people's mate-choosing ceremony enough times that he's on his last chance. Through a series of unplanned events, he accidentally abducts human Beryl Bowman, of St. Louis, and her dog, Snaps. Once he's managed to find tech that allows them to speak to each other--which he outfits Snaps with, as well, not being aware that, you know, humans and dogs don't actually understand each other as a matter of course--he explains the situation to Beryl. At the moment, because of computer failure, he can't get her back to earth. Beryl takes this fairly gamely and decides to go ahead and participate in the ceremony, see how things turn out while they're trying to find a solution to getting her back to earth.
Zylar is a fucking cinnamon roll hero, which I'm pretty consistently down for. He's got super low self-esteem when we meet him due to years of what would be considered emotional abuse by family in a human society. He's also a virgin because of how their society controls sex, although it plays differently in this book, since that's considered normal.
Beryl is a roll-with-the-punches girl. Like, almost a little too much, until later on? Although some of that can be put down to shock. She's considered primitive by Zylar's species, but through her completely different way of thinking about things and willingness to make allies, does incredibly well in the trials.
Meanwhile, spending time with someone who treats him well and values him for who he is--which, for the record, is pretty great--is building Zylar up into a healthy being, a guy who is in a good place to be a partner.
The world building in this book is interesting without being intrusive, Snaps as a character is both hilarious and bone-deep enjoyable, the main characters are fantastic and a few of the side characters are great as well, including Kurr the plant-alien. The villain of the piece is pretty one-note and basically a straight up meditation on the dangers of unchecked privilege, but he's not really the point, so that didn't bother me.
The two things that do bother me are this: one, the society that Zylar is part of has some seriously dark, post-apocalyptic, hierarchical shit going on, and it kind of just hangs out all throughout the book, ever-present, never really addressed. Two, due to this, there is surprise!character death to spur a plot point, and while normally I'd be like "okay, I see why A had to happen to have B happen," this is a romance novel, so it honestly felt a tiny bit like the covenant was broken. In general, I feel as though there are certain elements that leave a stain on the presumptive HEA, and these two sort of did.
Another extremely minor issue I had was that while we got to know Zylar extremely well, including his past and his motivations, I felt like Beryl was something more of a question mark. I know she's somewhat athletic and that she has hair long enough for a pony-tail. I know she's from St. Louis and has no family. Later on, in what feels like a poorly-planned info drop, I learn about her family life in about a paragraph of narrative text. But she doesn't have the same development that Zylar has, and I wish she did.
That being said, I would still whole heartedly recommend this book. It's the first in a trilogy, so part of me wonders if at least element one of my concerns gets cleared up later on. Plus, it's hilarious, heart-warming, the characters are super easy to root for, they make good decisions based on the information they have at any given time, they are honest and communicative with each other even when it's not easy, and in general, this is a peach of a book.
