Captive by KM Fawcett (The Survival Race #1)
Paranormal Romance
June 4, 2013
Forever Yours
Reviewed by Mandi
I’ll say upfront my biggest frustration with this book is how the romance develops but otherwise it’s a fun ride. The hero and heroine are both human and have been kidnapped to an alien planet which is unique. Let me set it up
Addy Dawson is a park ranger and while trying to get some visitors to safety when they come too close to a forest fire, she ends up being abducted by aliens. When she comes back to consciousness, she doesn’t know she is on an alien planet a million miles away from Earth. She realizes she has been kidnapped, as she wakes up next to a naked man.
This man is named Max and has been living with the Hyboreans for fifteen years. The Hyboreans capture humans to breed Alpha Gladiators, so they can fight each other for their entertainment. Max not only breeds but he is a gladiator himself. Expecting Addy to be a willing participant, he is shocked when she has no idea what is going or wants any piece of him. When the Hyboreans realize she is resistant to Max, they both get pulled out of the cage for discipline.
Addy gets sent to “The Yard” which is a a synthetic habitat made to look like the outside. It is here she learns about the planet she is on and why they kidnap people and breed humans. The Hyboreans are quite advanced on their planet, not only with speaking telepathically but they can give a woman hormones (or vitamins) that allow her to carry a baby full term in only 20 weeks. They can also bring people back from the dead, called reawakening. As we come to learn, Max is sick of being brought back from the dead over and over, and wants to live in “the real world” where once he dies, that is it. Once he realizes this about himself, he decides to help Addy try to escape. There is a colony of people hours away which they feel if they can make it to, they may have a chance at getting off the planet.
Things happen to Addy which I don’t want to get into due to spoilers but it makes her mistrust Max quite a bit. Mistrust obviously will hinder a romance, but I did wish their feelings for each other were more pronounced throughout the book. I also feel like while I could picture in my head what the planet looked like, I wanted more information about the Hyboreans. Maybe see them interact with each other rather than just the gladiators and Addy.
There is a character named Duncan who becomes an ally of sorts to Addy. I thought she trusted him way too easy in the beginning. I found his character odd and the revelation we get about him at the end a little too easy.
This book has a lot of action which for the most part I liked. Bad things happen to them (although being able to be reawakened aka brought back to life makes “surviving” these things much easier). There is one point in the book Max and Addy have to hide in a huge refuse container, and it’s totally gross. Yet I like that this was written as it shows escaping from aliens isn’t necessarily romantic.
She stared after him with mouth open. It wasn’t only because of his audacity. She’d forgotten how fine his naked body looked even when covered in slime.
There comes a point in life when propriety goes out the window, and that point comes when your body reeks of garbage after marinating in the putrid stuff for over four hours.
Fun world even though I wish a few things had fleshed out better and the romance had been more prominent.
Rating: C+
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