Review by Adrienne Dawn -- The Bonding by Imogen Keeper
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Adrienne Dawn
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Review by Adrienne Dawn -- The Bonding by Imogen Keeper
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Bonding" by Imogen Keeper.]
3 out of 4 stars
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In reading The Bonding, by Imogen Keeper, I realized two things: 1. I really like erotic romance. 2. Imogen Keeper is very good at writing it! The story starts out with Nissa running for her life on her home planet, and we see her and many of her people get into pods and jet to safety as they try to avoid the aliens bent on destroying their way of life.
Because Nissa is the “queen-designate,” she is one of the people put in the pods, as well as her parents, the king and queen. The rest were basically given their pods through a lottery system, but it was almost entirely women, due to the size of the pods.
We know most of this from the blurb on Amazon about the book, but what we don’t know is what happens after all this, and how long Nissa is in her pod before she is rescued by Tam. Nissa is brought back to life by Tam, a warrior who comes from a planet where most of their females died. Seeing a woman in the flesh, the very naked flesh, quickly gets his blood pumping and his mind racing. Tam wants the chance to bond with her, but her illness, the “blue tinge,” sets things in motion more quickly than he would like.
Before even being able to speak each other’s language, the two are forced to “bond,” and once this takes place, Nissa struggles with whether she would really be attracted to Tam and love him without the bond in place. She desires to have a chance to find out whether their love is real, and Tam spends a lot of time trying to keep her from being too worried about the question. He constantly distracts her with various interesting and well-described sexual encounters that cause me to put this warning out there: Have a cold beverage handy to slake your thirst, because if you like erotic romance, you’re going to need something to cool you down while you read this one!
The story of what happens after Nissa’s people are found is mostly a back story to the sex in the book, but still, I found myself wanting to know how things turned out. Did they go back to her planet and were her people still there? If they were there, were they changed, and did they even want to have anything to do with their former royal family? The amount of time we find out has passed since Nissa and her people went into the pods is quite a bit longer than I expected, and it did realistically cause Nissa to be in a hurry to get to the rest of the pods.
Tam and Nissa’s relationship is based on sex. We know that from the beginning, but they also have a need for each other besides the sex. They have a bond that is stronger than a normal human couple who have had sex. This bond intensifies everything in their lives, and it makes things very difficult for both of them when Nissa decides what she must do for her remaining people.
I found the concept of the bonding to be unique and interesting and at first, very thrilling and steamy. However, as the story continued on, it seemed to be a bit contrived and it got a little old when Nissa couldn’t go more than a couple of hours without Tam’s “serum.” There were also a few descriptions in the sex scenes that were what I labeled “gross,” as it was just a little too far with some descriptions, pushing it from erotic to “gross, I don’t want to imagine that.”
As the story continued on, I found a few grammatical errors, such as using the word “his” instead of “he,” or capitalizing a word in the middle of a sentence, but not so many that they bothered me.
I wanted to give this book a perfect rating, and I would have until the small errors started turning up. It was just enough that with a good conscience, I couldn’t give it a perfect rating. I rate this book a 3 out of 4 stars. I didn’t give it 4 stars, simply because of the grammatical and editing mistakes. I didn’t give it 2 stars because it was very well-written and engaging. I was drawn to read the book in stolen moments, and the erotic descriptions were hot and steamy, just the way they should be.
I think anyone that enjoys erotic romances would like this book, and I think it would be interesting to read the other books in the series. I would not recommend this book for younger readers, as it is full of the f-bomb and graphic sexual descriptions. Overall, I found this to be a can’t-put-it-down kind of book that I thoroughly enjoyed!
******
The Bonding
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3 out of 4 stars
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In reading The Bonding, by Imogen Keeper, I realized two things: 1. I really like erotic romance. 2. Imogen Keeper is very good at writing it! The story starts out with Nissa running for her life on her home planet, and we see her and many of her people get into pods and jet to safety as they try to avoid the aliens bent on destroying their way of life.
Because Nissa is the “queen-designate,” she is one of the people put in the pods, as well as her parents, the king and queen. The rest were basically given their pods through a lottery system, but it was almost entirely women, due to the size of the pods.
We know most of this from the blurb on Amazon about the book, but what we don’t know is what happens after all this, and how long Nissa is in her pod before she is rescued by Tam. Nissa is brought back to life by Tam, a warrior who comes from a planet where most of their females died. Seeing a woman in the flesh, the very naked flesh, quickly gets his blood pumping and his mind racing. Tam wants the chance to bond with her, but her illness, the “blue tinge,” sets things in motion more quickly than he would like.
Before even being able to speak each other’s language, the two are forced to “bond,” and once this takes place, Nissa struggles with whether she would really be attracted to Tam and love him without the bond in place. She desires to have a chance to find out whether their love is real, and Tam spends a lot of time trying to keep her from being too worried about the question. He constantly distracts her with various interesting and well-described sexual encounters that cause me to put this warning out there: Have a cold beverage handy to slake your thirst, because if you like erotic romance, you’re going to need something to cool you down while you read this one!
The story of what happens after Nissa’s people are found is mostly a back story to the sex in the book, but still, I found myself wanting to know how things turned out. Did they go back to her planet and were her people still there? If they were there, were they changed, and did they even want to have anything to do with their former royal family? The amount of time we find out has passed since Nissa and her people went into the pods is quite a bit longer than I expected, and it did realistically cause Nissa to be in a hurry to get to the rest of the pods.
Tam and Nissa’s relationship is based on sex. We know that from the beginning, but they also have a need for each other besides the sex. They have a bond that is stronger than a normal human couple who have had sex. This bond intensifies everything in their lives, and it makes things very difficult for both of them when Nissa decides what she must do for her remaining people.
I found the concept of the bonding to be unique and interesting and at first, very thrilling and steamy. However, as the story continued on, it seemed to be a bit contrived and it got a little old when Nissa couldn’t go more than a couple of hours without Tam’s “serum.” There were also a few descriptions in the sex scenes that were what I labeled “gross,” as it was just a little too far with some descriptions, pushing it from erotic to “gross, I don’t want to imagine that.”
As the story continued on, I found a few grammatical errors, such as using the word “his” instead of “he,” or capitalizing a word in the middle of a sentence, but not so many that they bothered me.
I wanted to give this book a perfect rating, and I would have until the small errors started turning up. It was just enough that with a good conscience, I couldn’t give it a perfect rating. I rate this book a 3 out of 4 stars. I didn’t give it 4 stars, simply because of the grammatical and editing mistakes. I didn’t give it 2 stars because it was very well-written and engaging. I was drawn to read the book in stolen moments, and the erotic descriptions were hot and steamy, just the way they should be.
I think anyone that enjoys erotic romances would like this book, and I think it would be interesting to read the other books in the series. I would not recommend this book for younger readers, as it is full of the f-bomb and graphic sexual descriptions. Overall, I found this to be a can’t-put-it-down kind of book that I thoroughly enjoyed!
******
The Bonding
View: on Bookshelves
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Latest Review: "The 11.05 Murders" by Brian O'Hare
