Sophia Rose Reviews: Strange Love by Ann Aguirre

 

Today Sophia Rose is here to share her thoughts on the first in a sci-fi romance series that she's been reading out of order.
Enjoy!

Strange Love by Ann Aguirre

#1 Galactic Love

Sci-Fi Romance

Publisher:  Self

Published:  1.15.20

Pages:  306

Rating: 4 stars

Format: ebook

Source:  purchased

Sellers: Amazon

ADD TO: GoodReads

GoodReads Blurb:

He's awkward. He's adorable. He's alien as hell.
Zylar of Kith Balak 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.

 

Sophia Rose's Review:

After experiencing the latter stories in this series first, I finally returned for the very beginning.  I ‘met’ Zylar and Beryl in the second book, Renegade Love, as secondary characters so it was fun to finally come back for the beginning.  Ann Aguirre’s alien romances present well-drawn characters and worlds that are truly alien in appearance and thought, but the tone of the books are often amusing as the species’ cultures thoroughly confuse one another.

 

Strange Love begins when Xylar goes to bring his potential Tiralan mate back to his world for The Choosing, the contest that determines which of his race are worthy of being chosen as progenitors.  Instead, in an accidental twist of fate, he unwittingly lands on an unknown, under-developed world, and brings back one of its females and her furry companion.  Unfortunately, their alien differences and even the rigors of the contest aren’t their most difficult issues.  Zylar has always come in last after his gorgeous, talented, and well-favored oldest nestmate who wants Beryl especially when she snubbed him to be with Zylar.

 

I liked that there was fascinating and creative alien description and culture.  Zylar truly is alien in appearance and in all other ways and it comes through when he’s doing the narrating, but his sweetness and honor and eventual love for Beryl also comes out.  And, she instinctively knows this when she looks at his brother and still chooses the humbler, average Zylar though later she learns to see through the alien looks to the soul inside.

 

The contest and the political intrigue stirred up by Zylar’s jealous brother provide most of the action and suspense portions as the story winds out steadily to the big moments at the end.  These moments are shared with quieter getting to know each other moments.

 

It was fun having Beryl’s dog given a language module and this allowed them to understand his speech.  He was a hoot.  Helix, Zylar’s AI was becoming sentient through the story and his crabby, snootiness was also amusing.

 

All in all, this return to the first book to see how it all got started was a blast.  I loved this alien-human romance pair and being along with them as they work hard to become a couple.  I can highly recommend this series to alien romance fans.

 

Author Bio:

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Ann Aguirre has been a clown, a clerk, a savior of stray kittens, and a voice actress, not necessarily in that order. She grew up in a yellow house across from a cornfield, but now she lives in Mexico with her family. She writes all kinds of genre fiction, but she has an eternal soft spot for a happily ever after.

Sophia’s Bio:

Sophia is a quiet though curious gal who dabbles in cooking, book reviewing, piano-playing, and gardening. Road trips and campouts, museums and monuments, restaurants and theaters are her jam. Encouraged and supported by an incredible man and loving family. A Northern Californian transplant to the Great Lakes Region of the US. Lover of Jane Austen, Baseball, Cats, Scooby Doo, and Chocolate.

As a lifelong reader, it was inevitable that Sophia would discover book blogs and the joy of blog reviewing. Sophia is a prolific reader and audiobook listener which allows her to experience so many wonderful books, authors, and narrators. Few genres are outside her reading tastes, but her true love is fiction particularly history, mystery, sci-fi, and romance. Though, sorry, no horror or she will run like Shaggy and Scooby.

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GoodReads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13418187.Sophia_Rose