Suddenly a Bride | The Opinionated Woman's Musings

Weird Sci-Fi stories challenging notions of what is romance ♥♥♥

I go through phases at times where I want to read a particular genre. I was in a science fiction mood and searched Amazon for books that I thought might be interesting. It started because I read a book about 3 years ago and I cannot remember the title or any of the main character names. I think I got it from the library. All I can remember is that it was a sci-fi and the main characters had a lot of conflict with each other but end up falling in love. Then she gets kidnapped and he saves her. I want to capture the emotion when I read that story but my search is has been fruitless. I wish I could get that book back. In the meantime, I read sci-fi romances trying to evoke similar feelings.

As the saying goes:

And I have been reading a lot of “frog” like books trying to find the book of my dreams.

Trek Mi Q’an series ♥♥♥

The Empress’ New Clothes (Trek Mi Q’an, Book One) – Zor & Kyra
No Fear (Trek Mi Q’an, Book Five) – Jek & Brenda
No Escape (Trek Mi Q’an, Book Four) – Cam & Kara
Devilish Dot Trek Mi Q’an, Book 6.5 – Vaidd & Dot ( Included in the book collection Manaconda)
Seized (Trek Mi Q’an, Book Six) – Dak & Geris

One Thousand Brides (Star Brides) & Bride’s Holiday Gift ♥♥♥

Planet Mail ♥♥

Suddenly a Bride (Across the Stars Book 1) ♥♥♥

One thing that I realized was that if a book is published by Ellora Cave, it probably is more about graphic, explicit love scenes than romance. I mean how romantic is the aliens-need-human-women trope?

Of all the books I read, Suddenly a Bride (Across the Stars Book 1) was my favorite. Yes, she was “married” without her consent, but her alien guy really tried to make sure she fell in love with him.

The books One Thousand Brides (Star Brides) & Bride’s Holiday Gift were freebies at the time because of a promotion. Even though the women were in effect kidnapped, I think I liked this story because (1) these aliens valued larger sized women (2) the heroine developed and embraced what she thought was important in order to fight for the male she wanted. I skipped over the excessively graphic scenes because it becomes redundant after a while.

In Planet Mail, while the heroine was not kidnapped, she was supposed to feel that it was a privilege that the king was going to try to get her pregnant. He is doing his duty with all women to try to get an heir. Because she is not tripping over herself to try to get preggers, he is intrigued. In the end, he is forced to choose between duty and love. Everyone has a happy ending in more ways than one **wink wink**. I skipped the multiple-parties-involved love scenes in this too because I am traditional one male-one female type of girl.

A common theme in Jaid Black’s books is that the female (even when forcibly snatched from the life she knew) is supposed to acquiesce because she is the soul mate of the alien. Plus, monogamy is a tenuous concept with a lot of grey area. It may seem that since I read a lot of the Jaid Black books that I must have enjoyed her series. I am confused myself why I read all of them.

The first book I read was No Fear (Trek Mi Q’an, Book Five). It was okay but a lot of it did not make sense because (1) some of the character names were similar (2) I had no idea about the back story of the worlds and (3) everyone seemed to have no problem with any weird-looking alien bring them pleasure. Not my idea of a party.

I read mostly a mixture out of curiosity as to what the author could imagine next and slight interest into the worlds that she created. I think of all the heroines, I liked Brenda (No Fear (Trek Mi Q’an, Book Five) the most and Geris (Seized (Trek Mi Q’an, Book Six) the least. Brenda’s easy acceptance was because her life on earth was not getting any better than being kidnapped by an alien swearing to love her forever. It seems that Geris was written with the stereotypical ghetto girl in mind. While I guess I supposed to be glad women of color were getting kidnapped too (at least she was being made a queen and not a slave…but I digress) I still did not like how she was portrayed. Kara was also annoying, but she was immature as well, which that had a lot to do with her decision-making. Dot was okay and the most realistic (as possibly could be when being kidnapped by aliens).

I did not buy the books on Amazon, but borrowed the series from a friend. I think the Jaid Black books are overpriced considering they are novella length. If I had bought for 99cents each, I would say it was worth checking out. However, the $3- 6 range for each book is way overpriced in my opinion, especially when a book is 100 pages or less. If my friend had not already had this books, I doubt that I would have bought any of them on my own.

My suggestion to Jaid Black: Think about lowering the price of your books

Should you buy? Go for the freebies if you want something different, but be prepared for gratuitous love scenes and possibly some explicit language.