Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - A Soul to Keep

Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

A Soul to Keep by Opal Reyne

14 reviews

the_wistful_word_witch's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I had originally bought all the ebooks for this series, but then a friend in one of my book groups recommended the audio version. And I'm ever so glad she did!!

I'm a sucker for monster smut, and A Soul to Keep stroked all the right spots. Reyne does a good job mixing fantasy with erotica, and the voice actors Hoffman and Milliken did a really great job. Their chemistry was good and didn't come across as super cheesy, they did fairly good keeping the various voices separate, and they made sure to vary the tones so it wasn't monotonous.

I thought Reyne's world-building was interesting and the concept intriguing. I'm looking forward to the next books in the series, although I'm sad that only the first two books are available as audiobooks.

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ptaradactyl's review

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Beauty and the Beast if the Beast never transforms. And while the monster sex scenes weren’t my particular thing, I do have to appreciate the endless, extremely creative horniness of humanity.

Reia frustrated me sometimes, and Orpheus got a bit flattened by the end. Still, it was interesting enough I didn’t stop reading.

Hey, it was different than all the regency romances I’d been reading.

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nose_in_a_book's review

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dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.0

🌶️🌶️

Boy do I have complicated feelings about this one. Starting with the positive, this MMC is quintessential baby girl. Sweet, naive, kind of pathetic, he definitely puts a middle finger in the face of toxic masculinity. He is a doting partner in the most intense sense and the FMC loves that about him which is really fun. Their relationship is the plot and for the most part, I was really here for it. I also liked the vibe of the book. I found the horror elements to dwindle over time, leaving a cozy fantasy by the end, a far cry from where we started. It’s a rare genre combination that I’m honestly obsessed with. I like that the author doesn’t try to sugar coat the things the MMC has done. It just is.

Let’s talk about the spice. Bases one, two, and three: phenomenal. I loved the intimacy of it and the unexpected filth. The build up was done beautifully and it happened just deep enough in the book for it to not dampen the horror aspects in the beginning. The actual sex was hard to read though. Part of it is for sure a difference in preference. His dick is the circumference of a thigh and that is just too big for me to even imagine as appealing. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways in which women are destroyed in childbirth when trying to accomplish something similar and by the end he isn’t even warming her up. I also cannot stand when authors try to make hitting someone’s cervix sound pleasurable. It isn’t. No matter how good other things may feel while it’s happening, every time I read it I’m convinced it’s never happened to the author. It’s similar to getting poked in the eye.

Now the really bad. This book goes hard into the victim blaming. Whether or not you like someone should not change whether they are a victim of sexual assault but the book really wants you to think that it does. There was an opportunity for the MMC to face what he had done, unknowingly, in the past but instead the author chose to make it the fault of the woman he’d assaulted with the “well she didn’t explicitly tell her dangerous kidnapper no” excuse. I have never lost trust in an author so quickly. For all the nuance she offered elsewhere, she created a 2D villain out of the victim and it pissed me off. I hope the author spends some time deconstructing how misogyny has impacted her. I can’t recommend this book to others off of this one scene which is a bummer considering the other 95% of the book was good.

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kirahaycock21's review

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This was my first romance book with monsters in it and I was a little skeptical at first but it got me hooked! It was so well written, you really fall in love with the characters and the tension is amazing.

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romancereader's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I liked this book I didn’t love it i just couldn’t seem to get into it which was mostly cause of me i loved the story but my mind has been having trouble reading books and enjoying them lately i feel like if i would have read this book a month ago when i wasn’t so deep in my mind i would have loved it more then i actually did this book is in a series with i think 4 other books which I'm sure there’s gonna be more in the series then just 5 but you get to meet the male main character in the next book in this book which I'm pretty sure this is a series of standalone’s but i still think you should read them in order just because you meet characters from the previous book in the next one this book was spicy not incredibly spicy but definitely still spicy its a happy ending with no cliffhangers and no love triangle or cheating the female main character is a virgin human and the male main character is a sweet caring monster but vicious when he is in the mood😈😈ifykyk this book did feel like a slow burn I think my favorite part about this book was that the male main characters eyes were like a mood ring every mood had a different color and it was fun and interesting learning about the meaning behind every color I don’t really have a whole lot to say overall i rated this book 3 stars⭐️⭐️⭐️

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