OMG!!! I am almost speechless...I chose to read this because it was written by Morticia Knight. After about 15 pages I actually closed the book and rechecked the cover; twice; then went to the Amazon site and checked to see if the book that was shown there was the same book that I was holding in my hand. I could not believe that this was written by one of my absolute favorites; love and read anything they write authors. The very same author that I have bought/own and have read and reread numerous times...her Command & Care, Sin City, Club Sensation, In The name of The Father, Power Exchange And my all-time, read it four times now, favorite...Kiss of Leather... All fantastic series...every single book in them. I absolutely loved them and gave each book in the series 5 bright shining, well earned, stars. But this one (?)...I have no problem believing that that the aliens in this story have captured and are holding Ms. Knight captive somewhere and that one of those sneaky creepy little alien devils actually wrote this and put Ms. Knight's name on the cover! To say that there was "something missing" in this one for me would be the understatement of the year. At least this one was borrowed and not bought...so back to my all-time favorites. Oh...would someone please pay her ransom? I need many more like the ones in the series that I mentioned. ( )

I received Slave for Two through the Goodreads Don’t Buy My Love program. This is the first book in the ‘Soul Match’ series. The characters are Chris, a human, and two aliens, Lasar and Nary. The story is told in third person from all three characters povs. The following review is my honest and unbiased opinion of the book which others may not agree with. It will also contain some spoilers but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.

2.5 Stars



I’m not quite sure where to begin with this story. It’s not what I expected from the blurb. That’s mainly due to the fact that despite it saying that Chris is ‘barely out of his teens,’ a line in the story says he’s nineteen years old. But the way he’s written, he’s younger than that. No more than sixteen or seventeen is how he comes across.

The book starts off immediately with the aliens aka ‘Alasharians,’ invading Earth. Chris’s father instructs him to do whatever it takes to survive. Chris’s father is later killed by the aliens and Chris, his mother and his two younger sisters, one six, the other eight, head for the mountains. Chris’s cousin Morgan is also with their group as they run from the aliens. Morgan’s parents sacrificed their lives to give Morgan a chance to escape. Both Chris and Morgan are built on the smaller side and the aliens are searching for human males that size, we find out why later. They’ve been hiding in the mountains for less than a week when Chris and Morgan hike to a tourist shop to retrieve items for the approaching cold weather. There they are captured by the Alasharians.

That is the basic plot that leads up to Chris being chosen by Nary and Lasar as their sex slave, only things don’t turn out as planned for any of them. After the capture, the time span covered by the book is condensed into two days. That’s because Chris, Nary and Lasar are soul mates. This of course speeds up the attraction between all of them and creates a miraculous understanding. I don’t care for this trope. There’s no tension or real effort to solve any issues between the characters. The soul bond solves everything. There also wasn’t much depth to the Alasharians and who they were, the story was mostly about the lust/attraction between the three MCs.

I found the storyline very similar to teenage chick lit dystopian fics. The kind where a teenage girl has her parents die and then finds out she has an amazing, incredible talent that will save the world. She also has two hot guys lusting after her. Usually one is the boy-next-door type and the guy the more arrogant or dominant bad boy. The only difference in this story is the MC is male, even though he acts quite like a teenage girl. And if anyone has read my other reviews, guys that are really girls, is a writing peeve of mine.

As to the characters, they didn’t have much depth to them. Conflicts were quickly resolved with the sexual/soul attraction that was very difficult for all of them to resist. Chris especially thought with his ‘other head’ and forgot about his mother and sisters stuck in the mountains, and Morgan who was brought along with Chris, but imprisoned off in another room somewhere. Chris was pretty self-involved with his horniness and the two hot aliens. One thing that really bothered me was at one point Chris is upset because he thought that Nary and Lasar could have killed his dad and Morgan’s parents. But once he found out they hadn’t, he was ok with it as long as Nary and Lasar were only defending themselves from the humans. Say what? The aliens invaded Earth, of course humans will defend their planet! Which means Chris thinks it’s ok for the aliens to defend themselves by killing humans who try to defend their own home and lives. Very twisted rationalization and another indication to me that Chris’s thinking is immature. Of the three characters, I liked Nary the best. We hardly learn anything about Lasar.

Here’s the part where I talk about Chris’s age. As I mentioned, not only is the blurb incorrect, Chris is written much younger. Here are the quotes I wanted to use to explain.

Page 18 – “My birthday was exactly a month ago. The day before they first attacked.”
Page 22 – said by Mr. Avery – “I don’t need some teenage grease monkey ordering me around!”
Page 24 – said by Chris’s mother arguing with Mr. Avery – “Just so we’re clear. My son has been out of high school for over two years. He graduated early because he skipped ahead.”
Page 136 – said by Chris – “I’m a horny teenager. This is killing me.”

Chris refers to himself as a teenager as does Mr. Avery. Chris’s mom says Chris graduated early. Usually kids are seventeen or eighteen when they graduate, so Chris could have been anywhere from fifteen to sixteen when he graduated early. If he’s been out of high school for slightly over two years then he’d just had his seventeenth or eighteenth birthday when Earth was invaded. There’s no indication Chris went to college, he worked only as a ‘grease monkey’ despite being smart and successful in school. If he didn’t go to college, I get the impression Chris is even younger than eighteen. I didn’t include the quote here, but Chris does tell Morgan, his cousin, that he was going to get a fake ID to get into a club. Other reasons I think Chris is young, is the way he’s written. As I mentioned about his similarities to a teenage girl from a dystopian fic, Chris cries a lot in this story. I know guys cry, but he cried excessively. From the description of Chris in the book, the guy on the cover doesn’t look anything like him. The cover guy looks like he’s in his mid to late twenties.

This story reads like a YA/NA fantasy, which I don’t read. The writing is simple and speeds along because there isn’t much information in the plot. I felt like I was skimming the surface and couldn’t get pulled in. I think that was also due to the fact that we were ‘told’ how Chris and the others felt, rather than ‘shown’ their feelings. Sentences that used ‘he knew,’ or ‘he felt,’ ‘he thought’ didn’t pull me in. I wanted to feel and I didn’t. Instances of Chris’s sudden guilt over forgetting about his family and Morgan, felt contrived. I also spotted numerous grammar errors. This story also ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. What the author did do well, was create distinct breaks for the changes of pov between the characters. I really like it when authors take the time and care to do that.

The author did leave questions unanswered in the story which are just enough to get a reader’s interest up for the following books. But I’m not sure I’d read the next ones because of the many factors I mentioned. To surmise, the characters didn’t have much depth, nor did the plot. The plot reminded me of a chick lit fic with a guy as the MC, even though he acted like a teenage girl. I felt that the story ‘told’ more than ‘showed’ so that I wasn’t able to feel connection to the characters. The writing was simple. All around, I was expecting a lot more from this book because of the blurb. Not a YA fantasy. Some good things, it was an easy read and if you want a book that will go by fast without angst or effort in reading, then this book is for you. I want to give this 2.5 Stars, but since Goodreads only allows full stars, I’ll give Slave for Two, 3 Stars.







( )

Here's what's not in the blurb: There's some extreme BDSM here that I was not at all expecting. And I don't normally shy away from BDSM, but there's something about they way it's played out and described here that just didn't work for me. Relationships where one partner actively punishes (not playfully) the other for "not listening" or "not doing what he's told" just don't work for me; it's not my thing and I don't find it romantic. I really had to push myself to get through to the end. ( )

As long as it all happens in fiction, I do like the occasional alien invasion with unexpected consequences. And while this story has a few elements that can be found in many of this subgenre – such as physically overpowering aliens, their desire to take humans as sex slaves, and a disdain for the much weaker and “emotionally challenged” humans – there are also some very intriguing differences. Some of them are only hinted at, but it looks as though they will become fundamental for the series’ development. That makes this first book not just entertaining and intriguing in its own right, but a very promising first volume, with hopefully many more to come.

Chris is a human, and he has had a very hard time of it ever since the aliens invaded Earth, flattened all resistance, and seem to be capturing humans for some nefarious purposes that Chris would rather not think about. He is trying to protect his mother and two younger sisters, as well as his cousin, Morgan, but all is in vain when the two of them get captured while on a supply run. Much to Chris’s shock, the two aliens who end up rescuing him from a slave master are nothing like what he expected.

Nary and Lasar are a soul-matched warrior pair in perfect sub/Dom balance, until Nary brings home Chris and everything changes. Chris is nothing like what they were told humans are like (aggressive and incapable of compassion), and they feel pulled toward him in ways that shock all three of them. Nary is usually the perfect sub, but with Chris he suddenly wants to dominate. Lasar feels bad because he wants to protect Chris as much as Nary – and that is just not supposed to happen since he and Nary are soul-matched.

As the three men get to know each other, it becomes apparent that something more is going on. Lasar discovers information about the invasion that shocks him to his core, but he can’t let anyone in on his secret without endangering his, Nary, and Chris’s lives. What a ride!

If you like your science fiction with a healthy dose of overpowering aliens, if significant mystery and slowly unraveling secrets are your thing, and if you’re looking for a read that is entertaining, suspenseful, intriguing, and scalding hot, then you will probably like this novel as much as I do. I am sure much more is yet to come, and am looking forward to the next installment.


NOTE: This book was provided by Pride Publishing for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews. ( )