The Dark Path of Romance

Kim and Angel #2

by J. Judkins

For Kim and her memory-challenged girlfriend Angel, a job searching for signs of alien activity implies sanctioned permission to do what needs to be done. Turns out, they’re going to need it! What they lack in skill and training they make up for with tenacity. But as a fan of science fiction in all its forms Kim feels up to the challenge.

Their investigation attracts the notice of Naomi, an alien who’d rather find love and live in the world than enslave it. Naomi recognizes Angel as one of their own and dares to dream her own dreams of independence. If Angel could escape and become free, why couldn’t she? Fortunately, no one’s mentioned that becoming a supervillain isn’t necessarily the perfect way to blend in and avert suspicion.

And if the fate of the world hanging in the balance wasn’t bad enough, Kim suspects Angel wants to marry her! Kim believes she’s found the perfect solution to keep herself single and free, but lately her own motivations have come into question. Is seducing Angel to take away Angel’s reason to marry her really the best solution?

A sequel that finally answers the question, ‘where the hell is book two?’ What are Angel’s origins? Will Kim ever catch a clue and embrace her love for Angel? Will Naomi and her chosen love interest survive Angel’s potentially fatal attempts at matchmaking? How far can the author take this ‘romance to extreme’ concept before running out of ideas?

Genres: Science Fiction, Lesbian, Humor, Audiobook, Comedy, Lesbian Fiction, LGBT

366 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2017

About the author

I grew up addicted to video games, which gradually changed into the role-playing games, both tabletop and computer based. Other than books and movies and lately, writing, I don't do much at all.

Writing books is new for me, and I think my twisted ideas may actually have a market. Here's hoping. I'll do my best to be sociable, but I'm not particularly good at it. If, however, you poke me with a sharp stick and send direct questions, I'll do my best to answer them.

Reviews

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update (once again!) October 2018 regarding the re-release with Angela Dawe as the new narrator
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This is a review of the re-release of the audiobook version of “The Dark Path of Romance - Kim and Angel #2”, along with my original comments on the release of the Kindle version of the book.

This re-release features Angela Dawe as the narrator; initially, the book was released as an audiobook with a male narrator - Richard Coombs. Now, Coombs may very well be a terrific narrator…but…did I mention he’s a male? This is a book about four lesbians. I tried listening to perhaps 20 seconds of the audiobook sample before deciding it wasn’t for me. Happily, the author realized the error of his ways and recommissioned an audiobook version with one of the very best lesfic narrators in the business - Angela Dawe!

Angela’s voices were fantastic! Naomi took a bit of getting used to, but I quickly liked her voice too. Initially, I felt that the audio speed was too fast. Searching Google for "normal human speaking speed words per minute", the first result (not a sponsored result) is "The average person speaks at somewhere between 125 and 150 words per minute. It's always better to speak more slowly than quickly.
Chapter One of "Dark Path to Romance" is 12:36 long, and contains 2,086 words. That's 167 words/minute (wpm).

Using the Audible 75% level, the speed becomes 125 wpm. Very understandable, and more pleasant than 167 wpm..though....a bit slow for me.

Why Audible allows nothing between 75% and 100%...yet provides speeds at 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, 2x, 2.5x, 3x and a particularly insane and unusable 3.5x is probably documentation for a true lack of users of audiobooks at Audible.
At an unavailable 90% speed we’d have 150 wpm. So, the Audible audiobook is empirically "too fast", and the "standard" range would be to play it back at 75-90% of the commercial file speaking speed.

Ahhh…but perhaps I nitpick. Please don’t be dissuaded by my geeky girl evaluation of what is a very enjoyable audiobook!

I rated the Kindle version of “Dark Path” 4*, and I rate the audiobook 4.6*, rounded up to 5* because it’s terrific fun and I’ll listen to it many times.

For the record, btw, I was offered a promo code for a free version of the original audiobook (with the male narrator), but I did not acquire the audiobook. That audiobook was also briefly available as part of the Audible Unlimited Romance subscription, and I did not access the book then either. I paid for the Angela Dawe version myself….and I’m very glad to have listened to the book.

“Dark Path of Romance - Kim and Angel #2” is highly recommended for fans of silly sci-fi lesbian romance! There’s room for a book three….and I hope J. Judkins delivers!!

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Update December 2017 regarding the Audible edition:
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Well, DAMN. I was sooooo excited to see that I'd missed noticing the Audible version being released last month and went straight to Audible to buy it. I couldn't wait to see who the new narrator would be. And then. Thud. A male narrator. For Kim, Angel, Naomi and Melanie? This is a book about lesbians for gods sake. Horny lesbians! Who the hell wants to listen to a man reading this???? I sampled a few sentences of the audio to see if it might possibly work. Crap no. TERRIBLE. I'm sticking to Voice Dream for this book.

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Back to my original review
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“The Dark Path of Romance…Kim and Angel #2” picks up immediately after Book #1. There is no audiobook available yet, but it is in process, though with a different narrator. I listened to “Dark Path” using VoiceDream. Initially, I tried reading/listening to the book as the author released it chapter-by-chapter (it was initially called “The Plot Device”), but I didn’t like waiting for new chapters, so I decided to wait until the book came out.

The first book, “A Date With Angel: And Other Things That Weren’t Supposed To Happen”, is one of my favorite audiobooks - it struck a great (and unusual) balance between lesbian romance, sci-fi and comedy, and I’m glad to say that I also enjoyed the sequel - but with reservations. While the author corrects some of the writing flaws from “Date With Angel”, he introduces a few new ones in “Dark Path”.

Kim continues to have mixed feelings about her relationship with Angel. Oh, she now accepts that she enjoys sex, but she backtracks on her assertion of love for Angel, and decides to be the sexual aggressor so that Angel won’t feel compelled to marry her for sex. Yeah, she’s still slightly insane, but her plans do keep the book fun. Kim’s internal dialogs aren’t as repetitious nor as lengthy as they were in book one, and I was glad for the tighter writing.

We continue to see Angel primarily thorough Kim’s eyes, and Angel continues to concoct extravagant (and dangerous!) plans for the purpose of helping true love blossom. As one of the new MCs observes, both Kim and Angel are completely insane….”There seems to be a consensus on that,” Angel agrees.

Interactions between Kim and Angel continue to be fun, and their use of, and naming of, the alien device is both unexpected and fun. Conversations with Kim’s father provide further opportunities for terrific humor.

The two new MCs also have several hilarious interactions with each other, and with Kim and Angel, but it’s with these characters that “Dark Path” shows it’s biggest flaw: overall the book and these characters feel rushed to completion. There are several missed opportunities for minor editing and polish that would’ve really helped.

Naomi, an alien like Angel, yearns to be free of her masters and is thrilled to find that Angel found a way to freedom. She’s also astonishingly dim to be a high-ranking alien, and she embraces Kim’s suggestion to be a super villain as a path to individuality. Naomi also is hugely attracted to Melanie, a human, and her cluelessness as to Melanie’s mutual attraction results in some of the funniest parts of the book.

Melanie is the sanest of the four MCs, except for the fact that she’s hugely attracted to Naomi. Her role at Naomi’s cover company is never really explained satisfactorily (does she work for the government, spying on Naomi and the other aliens?), and she pretty much just serves as a straightman (in the comedic sense; she is after all actually a lesbian woman, not a straight man!) for Naomi and also for Angel’s plan to free Naomi.

“A Date With Angel” felt like a labor of love by the author. It was a bit on the long side, and I suspect he loved what he wrote too much to edit as much as it needed. “Dark Path” feels like lots of great ideas, has some very good dialogue and entertaining action, but I didn’t root for Naomi and Melanie nearly as much as I did for Kim and Angel in book one. I missed things like Kim’s slow recognition that she liked touching, kissing and being touched by Angel…and Angel’s growing realization that she too liked kissing Kim, and Angel trying to get to another base with Kim while Kim acts like she doesn’t want sex, but is constantly disappointed when sex doesn’t happen. There’s none of that level of interaction between Naomi and Melanie. Naomi and Melanie are more like a vaudeville act - funny but without any depth. Certainly their story didn’t really feel like a romance, despite the book title.

I think the author meant to finish this sequel some time ago, and suspect he finally decided it was overdue, and would spend time to just wrap it up. There is no cliffhanger, but the end does hint toward the possibility of a Book #3, continuing the adventures of Kim and Angel.

I gave the audiobook “Date With Angel” 5*, and I’ve listened to it many times. “Dark Path” is a good sequel, and I recommend it - but it is a 4* recommendation, not a 5*. I will, though, get the audible version when it’s released….the previous narrator did a very good job and I hope her replacement does even better! With the right narration, the silly humor could really shine.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a worthy sequel to the super fun rom-com A Date With Angel. Like the first book this was an enjoyable light-hearted tale packed full of romance, humor, fun sci-fi references, and hilarious mishaps!

Kim and Angel might have warmed to their role as lovers in the first book but the pairs weird quirks mean it is not all plain sailing. Kim thinks Angel is manipulating her towards a quick-fire marriage. She just has to figure out a way to stop that before it is too late and she finds herself a HEA....lol it is Kim after all so it takes her a bit to figure out that is not exactly a bad thing! We also got a few hilarious scenes where Angel got introduced to Kim's father. Outside of the romance Kim and Angel got into the swing of their new alien hunting job. They even prove quite good at it.

We got a secondary romance in this one as alien agent Naomi, in her undercover role as an office manager, found herself drawn towards human workmate Melanie. I thought the secondary romance was fun and I did like both new characters even if they were not quite as much fun as Kim and Angel. There was plenty of hilarity as Naomi proved just as socially inept as Angel when it came to human interactions.

All in all I quite enjoyed this fun sequel and definitely hope their will be a third book in the series as this sort of light hearted comedy romance seems slim on the ground in the sci-romance genre!

Reread update: This was just as fun the second time around:)

Audio Note: We had to suffer a narration change in the second instalment of this series. Kendall Taylor, who did a fantastic job with the first book, was replaced by Richard Coombs. The change was not an upgrade. I do not want to put the boot too hard into Coombs as I do feel like he turned in an acceptable performance and was in tune with the humor but the sad fact is that he was just not the best choice to voice a book with an almost exclusively female cast! The other flaw in his narration was making Kim sound a little too whiny at times. Taylor always managed to make Kim sound horrified and exasperated rather than whiny.

If there is a third book I'd like to see Kendall Taylor brought back as the narrator. Failing that I think they should just stick with Coombs. He gave this one a decent shot and definitely did not ruin the audio. He is just not as good or suited to the story as Taylor was but I'd rather Coombs again for the third book than having to get used to yet another new narrator.

Audio Note 2: The audio version of this book got rerecorded as a lot of people were not a fan of poor Richard Coombs! For my reread I went with the new version of the audio narrated by Angela Dawe. It was an upgrade on the first version as Dawe seemed a good fit for the story. Not so good as the narrator for the first book but pretty decent and I felt like this second version was worth the money:)

[Book Worm · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion, this is a good sequel to book 1.
First of all, it is hard to fulfil high expectations after having read a very funny and crazy first book.
Second, this book is consistent with the crazy inner monologue and dialogue I so very much enjoyed in A Date With Angel.
Third, there is interesting character development on Kim's part.
However, I did have the feeling that Naomi and her love interest could have used just a little more development.
Still, this is the most unusual comedic science fiction I have ever laughed at.
Great job!

[lov2laf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I read this a couple of years after reading the first book and have little memory of the details from that and, for whatever reason, I had interruptions every few pages so the stopping and starting for this read was crazy. It gave me a disjointed and sometimes frustrating feel on the book and, to be fair to it, I think I'm going to need to reread this.

That said, I would say this is not a standalone book and you'd definitely benefit from reading the first in the series (and to have read it recently) before picking this one up. This book definitely felt like a wrap up of the first so books one and two feel like a complete set.

The sci-fi, geek, and comedic tones continue as does Kim's convoluted and manic thinking, whose point of view we're mainly in. The content is light-hearted but you definitely need to pay attention while reading to fully grasp the circuitous dialogue and inner thoughts of the characters. Don't read this when you're tired. A lot of the humor comes across through double entendres and misunderstandings which is always amusing.

Like the first book, there are a chockfull of references to video games, sci-fi movies and the like so the more into those you are the more amusement you'll get out of it. I particularly enjoyed the references to Fallout 4 and Scooby Doo. For those not in the know, by the way, the reboot of Scooby Doo's Mystery Incorporated two season series is cult status fab and should be seen in one's lifetime...especially since Velma is finally cast as lesbian with Hot Dog Water (though the depiction is subtle).

In this read, we get introduced to two new characters, Naomi and Melanie. I actually really liked their interactions and found them more amusing than Kim and Angel's, mainly due to Melanie's reactions. Melanie is the only grounded, sane character and I would've liked more development between her and Naomi...or even more camaraderie between her and Kim. I agree with some other reviewers that Naomi and Melanie felt rushed at the end and would've liked to see that play out more. I have no idea what Melanie sees in Naomi, to be honest...hmm, maybe they could be in their own book?

Despite the "Romance" in the title, I still wouldn't call this a romance due to the lack of warm fuzzies and the emphasis of slapstick humor but main plot points are commitment and matchmaking. There is kind of an "awwww" feel in the end, though.

On the whole, the plot of the book is really out there and clever and that's to be appreciated.

If you're looking for a light and zany f/f read with sci-fi and budding romances at their heart this and the first book "A Date With Angel: And Other Things That Weren't Supposed To Happen" are great.

Oh, and the last few lines in "The Dark Path of Romance" are a Star Wars reference in case you're not sure.

[Lexxi Kitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I forgot to write a review. mmphs. Well, some quick notes. Hopefully I'll write more later.

01) While there is sex in this book, there is less of it than in prior book;
02) There are two point of views in this book (or, if other heads get hopped into, only two are remembered by me) - the main character from the prior book (Kim) + Naomi;
03) The POV characters appear to be insane;
04) Book picks up almost immediately after the end of prior book;
05) There are two 'couplings' in this book - there's a similarity in the 'coupling' but I won't elaborate;
06) There is humor in this book, some of which caused me to laugh loudly, but much less than in prior book;
07) There seems to be a . . . hmms, how to word this. First book started strong, but then the 'craziness' of being inside Kim's head started to become too almost too much to stand - second book picks up with that . . . then slides down into more rational type (or, I've gone insane and therefore it seemed more rational to me in a sliding scale way);
08) There is no 8;
09) There is no 9;
10) I should have written more status updates as I went along.

This book was a quick enjoyable read that included some good laughs, and, a bit of insanity on display.

Rating: 4.44

September 7 2017

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as crazy as book 1 but with addition POV's. Liked it. Zany, clueless, bizarre, all fit, lol.

[AnnMaree Of Oz · Rating 4 out of 5]

An epic and convoluted sequel, just as expected! Lol!

It continues the theme of the previous book plus adds a few new characters, too.

Naomi is desperate for independence and love. But she can't see what's right in front of her face. Literally the beautiful woman right there asking her out and wanting to date her.
The indirect approach of subtle human interaction is clearly lost on her. Frustratingly so.

Meanwhile Kim is desperately trying not to fall in love and commit to Angel. Her fear is getting in the way of her attachment. Or is it the other way round?

The lines between what is human and alien interaction are blurred in this puzzling installment.

[Jim D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I jumped on this instantly after reading Date with Angel as I was totally hooked. While still good, I was not as overwhelmed as i was with the first book, so i would give it 3.5 stars. There are still lots of laugh out loud scenes and the Kim and Angel interactions are wonderful. The new characters seem only as foils and the plot got even more outrageous as it went along. Overall, it was a good read and a satisfying sequel to the first. I want more of Kim and Angel though, and hope there is a follow-on to continue their zany adventures.

[Tinything · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this second book as much as the first book! Err.. sorry i love the first book a bit more. Even so i still enjoyed this book as much. It still made me laugh so hard!! I love Angel and Kim so much, they are so funny and so adorable together and i love their logic or the way they think.
I really enjoy this book! :)

[Heather Henkel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

This was a really great follow-up to the first book. I thought it was great to watch Angel and Kim's relationship develop. I also love how Angel helped Naomi and Melanie's relationship .

[Lucky Luc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very entertaining, especially with Angela Dawe’s narration bringing each character to life.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I forgot to review this, back when I first finished it, so here goes...

This novel is a witty sequel to the first Kim and Angel book, and continues the story right where the first left off, with much more romantic over-thinking, geeky references, and over-the-top-ishness (yeah, I made that up as I was too lazy to go find the right word...and I guarantee that there IS a word for it).

We find out there really ARE aliens infiltrating the Earth, and that they are just as confused as the rest of us, and that most are just looking for the same things we are...love and world domination. Duh.

This novel is fun and LOL-able, and provides many of the answers to questions raised in the first book...and totally thumbs its nose at the rest, much to our entertainment.

Enjoy it!

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got the book this morning and just finished it after reading on and off all day. "The Dark Path of Romance", the sequel to "A Date With Angel" is the book I'd been waiting for, and a great continuation of the story of Kim and Angel. For those who haven't read the first book, Kim is an ordinary human who has fallen in love with the beautiful but memory-challenged Angel, who may or may not be an alien. As their relationship progresses through misunderstandings and comic interludes, Angel continues to seek out her true nature. Kim follows along, all the while worrying: Will Angel choose the her or the stars?

I won't give any spoilers, but all the loose ends, particularly concerning Angel's true origins, are finally tied up. The book was funny, manically romantic, and enjoyable, as was "A Date With Angel". The author's writing style has improved and his comic touch is surer as he chronicles the continued adventures of Kim and Angel. I would recommend this to all who've read "A Date With Angel", and if you haven't read it, then go out, get it, read it, and then read "The Dark Path of Romance". You'll be glad you did!

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious. Also insane. Hilariously insane?

Story is great. It's also fairly silly at times, but entertaining and most importantly funny. I can't imagine anyone reading this expecting a super serious read given the first book. That said, if you liked that one you will like this one. I look forward to seeing more from this author.

[vacatedboat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great follow-up to A Date with Angel, which I recommend reading first, as The Dark Path of Romance is definitely not a stand-alone.

I’m really lucky that my wife is a gamer-geek, as it allowed me a reference if I needed one, which didn't happen often since I've watched her play almost all games mentioned. Still, she totally geeked out if I did stop reading to ask her question. Her excitement made this read worth it alone, but really, even without a living reference, this is a great series and I found it hard to put either book down. I love the miscommunication, the over-analyzing, and the absolutely wacky things that happen while Angel and Kim try to understand one another. The author is really good at playing on Angel's tendency to take every word spoken quite literally. Pretty much any ‘innocent’ comment that Angel made to Kim’s dad had me snickering to myself (since I read most of this in a somewhat public environment and couldn’t actually laugh without looking insane).

I really appreciate that this series is completely unique to anything I’ve ever read and if this author continues to write, I will definitely continue to read their work.

[L E · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the first book and loved its humorous interactions of miscommunication/interpretation between Kim and Angel and happen to get this book as just another read not realizing it was the sequel and was nicely surprised. This one has 2 more characters with the same comical misinterpretation of each literal word which made it equally entertaining for me. I liked that one was human and the other… from out of this world? Just goes to show they are all alike in more ways than they think. They all just want LOVE!

[Linh Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

More actions and characters than the first book. Still very entertaining.

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