Name: Strange Love
ISBN: 9781658713764

Ann Aguirre

He's awkward. He's adorable. He's alien as hell. Zylar of Kith B'alak is a four-time loser in the annual Choosing. If he fails to find a nest guardian this time, he'll lose his chance to have a mate for all time. Desperation drives him to try a matching service but due to a freak solar flare and a severely malfunctioning ship AI, things go way off course. This 'human being' is not the Tiralan match he was looking for.She's frazzled. She's fierce. She's from St. Louis.Beryl Bowman's mother always said she'd never get married. She should have added a rider about the husband being human. Who would have ever thought that working at the Sunshine Angel daycare center would offer such interstellar prestige? She doesn't know what the hell's going on, but a new life awaits on Barath Colony, where she can have any alien bachelor she wants. They agree to join the Choosing together, but love is about to get seriously strange.

An Alien Abduction Romance

Strange Love

Kelly Casey

What an interesting and fun alien romance. I liked how beautifully consensual the romance was, and the alien Zylar was always making sure his human Beryl had a choice. I found the descriptions fascinating, if a bit hard to picture. I also enjoyed the plot of the brutal competition, and the heartless brother they conspired against. Honestly though the best part of this story is the talking dog.

I'm excited to pick up more from this author, and I really want to hear more about Zylar and Beryl. 
Fully recommend giving this one a try. 

Becky

This book was mental. It was like nothing I've read before and I kind of went in thinking it would be totally not my thing but quite fun to read all the same. I was not wrong. It was fun to read. But not my kind of read? Yeah, it could have converted me to other weirdly fun reads like this one.

I kind of expected the male MC, Zylar, to be kind of alpha like. Even though everything I'd seen about this book said he was a beta hero I just assumed because he abducts Beryl and that's not the most beta action but oh boy was I wrong. And from the misunderstanding at the start everything just kept getting better. I mean Beryl gets abducted with her dog, Snaps. And then she fully expects probing (that's what aliens do, right?) and instead is given a room. Has a translation device installed in her and gets asked to alien marry him. Like, that's hilarious. The whole concept was funny. Especially when there was a talking dog involved (I ❤️ Snaps 4eva). 

Then the book went kind of Hunger Games with a competition involved for folks to get alien married and that almost seemed weird and the book almost lost me there. But then during the competition Zylar and Beryl grew closer and the romance happened. I was already to be like romance won't work in this alien space romance they're just too different but it totally did! Just trust me if you read it you'll get it. But it's safe to say alien physiology was very different which made the sex scenes interesting to read. Yep, there were sex scenes and I did not hate them. 

The other thing I liked was the inclusivity of this book. An aliens characters pronouns were they and them and I never saw a massive conversation about it it just was (which obviously why should this alien marriage thing be exclusively heterosexual?). Also, before you begin questioning why it was human concepts used in an alien world. Well that's the translation device in play. For both Beryl and Zylar they didn't speak each others language so the translation device worked to change things to the nearest concept for each of them so Beryl was understanding it in a human context. 

Anyway, this was a trippy read I I lay expected to enjoy but by the end end I was like 'there is gonna be another, right?' so that's a sign of a good read.

He's awkward. He's adorable. He's alien as hell. Zylar of Kith B'alak is a four-time loser in the annual Choosing. If he fails to find a nest guardian this time, he'll lose his chance to have a mate for all time. Desperation drives him to try a matching service but due to a freak solar flare and a severely malfunctioning ship AI, things go way off course. This 'human being' is not the Tiralan match he was looking for.She's frazzled. She's fierce. She's from St. Louis.Beryl Bowman's mother always said she'd never get married. She should have added a rider about the husband being human. Who would have ever thought that working at the Sunshine Angel daycare center would offer such interstellar prestige? She doesn't know what the hell's going on, but a new life awaits on Barath Colony, where she can have any alien bachelor she wants.They agree to join the Choosing together, but love is about to get seriously strange.

Jo H

3.5 ⭐️ and some slightly dissenting views here.

There is a lot to like in this humorous and mostly cute story of a human female and an alien male finding actual love together despite the odds, including but not limited to; an honorable and compassionate awkward/shy/ordinary/beta hero, a pet almost main character... a TALKING DOG!* at that, no insta-lust between two totally alien to each other species, no insta-love but a slower moving mutual curiosity, respect, admiration and fondness that grows into love, gladiator style 'games', a sentient plant-like new BFF, and a snarky AI character.

But, there's also some things I wasn't so keen on; it begins with the male abducting the female and I'm not a fan of that trope, the male is far too insect-like (!) for my personal reading comfort given they have sex (a few times!), the lack of guilt shown by the MCs for their part (view spoiler)[in the murder of a secondary character (which was admittedly not entirely unjust given his many shenanigans) (hide spoiler)] in fact, I could have done without that dark part of the story as I think our couple had enough conflict to contend with already. And the ending, which IMO wasn't entirely happy. These things stopped it being a four star for me.

And on a completely personal note, the name Beryl. If the book had been set around 70-100 years ago that name would make total sense, but for a 21st century character seemingly in her twenties... not so much at all. I mean, who in the 1980s or 90s was naming their newborn Beryl? Who since... perhaps the 50s latest were using that name? As the holder of a name much older than I am and always hating it since childhood, I also hate period (not to be confused with traditional) names being used for contemporary characters as much as I do silly-sounding made-up ones we seem to get so many of in romance these days. 

* Oh, and watch out for the "tiny green dirt dogs"... that was sooooo cute!

Strange Love An Alien Abduction Romance