Alien Attraction

Alien #6

by Tracy Lauren

Clark
Sometimes you meet people in life that draw you in like a magnet. The two of you align so perfectly there isn’t anything you can do to stop the attraction. That’s what it was like for me and Tennir. Only, this is an attraction that isn’t meant to be and now I must do everything in my power to fight those feelings, because unfortunately, he’s the one alien I can’t fall in love with.

Tennir
I don’t know when it happened, but it happened nonetheless. I fell for a human. One day in the lab our eyes met and it dawned on me: she’d become my best friend in the world. I realized right then that I wanted more. I wanted all of her. But what is there to do if she fights the attraction we both feel? I have to find a way to convince Clark that no matter what world we’re on, she and I belong together.

Genres: Science Fiction Romance, Aliens, Audiobook, Romance

119 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 14, 2020

About the author

Tracy Lauren is a loving wife to her gorgeous but weird husband Greg, and a dedicated mother to her two wonderful children. She has her M.S. in Clinical/Counseling Psychology and during her time as a therapist she provided counseling services specializing in grief and trauma as well as attachment focused parenting. She is now taking time off from her career to focus on her family and explore life as an indie author.

Tracy’s interests have always been in the human experience, and in her writing she aims to capture just that. If you love the thrill of adventure to go with your science fiction romance, then Tracy’s books are for you.

Reviews

[Poppy || Monster Lover · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit Juvenile

The whole “we can’t date because my best friend thinks you’re hot and wants to bang you” thing felt like junior high school. There are so many ways to play with the miscommunication trope, especially when you mix in an alien culture, that it was disappointing the author went with this one.
Clark and Tennir were a good couple and had potential to have a great story, but this just fell short. I did like the things Tennir did for Clark and the spice, while limited, was good.

Spice: 2/5

TW: violence, discussion of trafficking/abduction

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clark and Tennir. They're colleagues and friends before the fact and it takes a while for (a) Tennir to realize that the reason he feels so happy around Clark is because he's caught feeeeeeelings for her and (b) Clark to stop hiding behind her friendship with April and April's crush on Tennir as a way to avoid admitting the big guy REALLY does it for her. In fact, Clark fights against her feelings pretty hard. Mostly because she feels like she's betraying the lady-code of "thou shalt not mack on your BFF's crush."

Which is understandable in some ways because human friendships on a distant planet are few and far between and Clark doesn't want to lose that with April, but also...CLARK AND TENNIR ARE SO FREAKING CUTE TOGETHER.

I mean, the guy sees her. He SEES her. He sees that she needs more out of her job and he finds a way to give it to her and I like that. I like that a lot.

A jaunt off-planet, an unexpected meeting with another human, a teeny-tiny run-in with space pirates, a hunky alien scientist facing his worst fears and coming out ahead, and a lady who figures out life's too short and she needs to live it large. With her alien boo. Yessssss.

-Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal

[Becky (romantic_pursuing_feels) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: Some of my goodreads shelves can be spoilers

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔 (It’s a shorter book)
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥 (There’s some scenes of dreams and fantasizing but one ‘full’ scene)
Humor: Yes, a bit
Perspective: first person from the hero and heroine (and I think the epilogue is from April’s POV?)
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: very soon in, Chapter 1 (about 6%)
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, immediately after the end of the story and from a side character’s POV
Format: listened to an audiobook from the library (Hoopla)
Why I chose this book: I liked a lot of Lauren’s books and wanted to come back and complete the series.
Mains: Clark and Tennir – This is a M/F relationship between an alien hero and a human heroine
(Descriptions found at end of my review)

Should I read in order?
Ideally I think, yes? I found myself wishing I had given myself a bit of refresher because it’s been a few years. The romance stands alone but you will know more about the world they’ve created and the group of people living on this mostly abandoned planet.

Basic plot:
Clark and Tennir have worked together in the lab but the relationship has switched from friendship to passion – Clark must stop because it jeopardizes a friendship.

Give this a try if you want:
- science fiction romance
- alien setting – this takes place on an alien planet
- alien hero / human heroine
- friends to lovers
- coworkers (both work in the lab)
- scientist mains
- close proximity on a space ship
- shorter novel
- forbidden love - her best friend likes him
- average steam – 1 full scene towards the end

Ages:
- didn’t catch either

First line:
This time, there’s an alarm blaring.

My thoughts:
It’s been a couple years since I paused this series (I was listening to them on audio, and this is where the series stopped) but I thought of it and wanted to dive back in. I kinda think I should have at least reread book 1 to get a feeler again for what was happening in this world. I found myself confusing some things with other alien series I’ve read more recently like Dixon and Avelines series.

BUT it is a shorter romance that really focuses on the couple so I appreciated that a lot. Some aspects to it just felt very...high school with ‘well I like him so you can’t like him’ aspects. I didn’t like how Clark didn’t seem to really listen to Tennir about whether he wanted to pursue April or not. But once they leave together on the ship the close proximity was really great and I enjoyed it.

So a fast read, the steam was a bit of a let down to me because we really only get one full scene. And then he was like ‘beg me for it’ and I was melting and wanted more. I liked a lot of lines and parts of this story overall.

I liked the narration – I listened to the early ones in the series because Mason Lloyd is a fave narrator for me so it was sad to me it switched – but I really adored Gabriel De Leon and Eva Caine’s narration. Would totally seek out more books from them.

Few random reading stats for this author
# of books read: 9
Average rating from me: 4 stars
Favorite book: Probably Alien Instinct

Cock/Hero Stats:

- I think there was more world building in prior books – as it’s been awhile I don’t recall much at this point.
- Tennir is alien with dark skin and he’s hairless
- I think his cock is pretty normal?? I don’t recall much details (I think maybe it was mentioned it’s large and looks uncircumcised?)


Content warnings: (This should be taken as a minimum because I could have missed some!)

- there’s some remembrances of violence, imprisonment, slavery and death
- there is some violence and death on page

Author given content warnings: Nothing on audio (I always encourage you to check author’s websites, since Amazon penalizes authors for certain content warning words in their novels)



Locations of kisses/intimate scenes, safe sex, consent, pregnancy/child in the story:

Safe sex: No
How’s the consent? It’s good
Pregnancy/children in story? No children or pregnancy on page in the story
Chapter 5 (28%) – hero fantasy dream with the heroine
Chapter 20 (94%) – fingering for her, some dirty talking, missionary

Total chapters: 20 and an epilogue


Extra stuff like what my review breakdowns mean, where to find me, and book clubs


Full break down on what my ratings above mean here:
Overall: How I felt about it everything considered!
Readability: How ‘readable’ was the book? Did I fly through it? Did I have to tell myself to pick it back up repeatedly? Were any passages confusing? (I will probably score like (1) is literally unreadable due to formatting/typing errors, etc (2) There were lots of errors that made it difficult to read OR It was extremely confusing and I had to reread passages to make sense of it OR I disliked it so much I had to bribe myself to keep reading (3) I didn’t really want to keep reading and would have preferred to abandon the read and start something else OR some minor continuity issues/confusion (4) I liked it fine, maybe a minor error or 2. I was happy to pick it up when I had time. (5) I never wanted to put this down. I thought about it when I wasn’t reading it. I hid in the bathroom from my kids to read. I threw inappropriate food at my children for dinner so I could read instead.)
Feels: Totally subjective to each person but did the book give me any tingles? Any butterflies? Did it rip my heart out (in a good way?)
Emotional depth: How well do I feel I know the characters at the end? How much did I feel their emotions throughout the story?
Sexual tension: Again, subjective, but how strong was the wanting and longing to me between the characters? A book might have strong sexual tension without a single touch.
Romance: Was there romance? Did romantic things happen? This can be actions/words/thoughts of the characters and again is subjective.
Sensuality: This is how the intimate scenes are written. Kisses and sexual scenes – how sensual were they? Were they on the mechanical side? Was there emotional pull tied in? Were the details explicit or flowery? These are subjective but generally (1) too short to get a good judgment (2) not all what I'm looking for - very vague or flowery prose (3) either not explicit enough or not enough emotional pull (too mechanical/physically descriptive without the emotions) (4) what I love in a scene (5) absolute perfection - perfect balance of emotional longing and explicit descriptions
Sex Scene Length: How long the bedroom scenes are (generally (1) is 1-3 sentences (2) is a few paragraphs to a page-ish (3) is about average, a few pages (4) more well developed scenes, quite a few pages with descriptions (5) the majority of the book takes place in the bedroom. This is always hard to tell for me on audio!
Steam Scale: Generally, each flame is a scene. If scenes are super close together I sometimes combine them. If a scene is super short or so vague I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t count it. There’s some levels of grey but generally the number of flames is how many sex scenes there are (I max out at 5 so I’ll put a + after if there’s more than that)



Find me
Instagram || The Storygraph || Bookbub

Book Clubs
The Ton and the Tartans (Historical Romance)
Upturned Petticoats and Undone Cravats (Historical Romance with Steam Requirements)
A Love Less Ordinary (Science Fiction, Paranormal, Monster, Fantasy Romance)
Modern Manuscripts (Contemporary Romance)
Words for the Wicked (Contemporary Romance with Steam Requirements)
Vintage Romance (Old School Romance – published 2000 and prior)

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

We finally get Tennir's story!

I like brainy hero's and Tennir's no different. He spends his time helping the community grow plants and stay safe on the planet. He has a little PTSD which is to be expected after what happened in his past. His main helper in the lab is Clark. She monitors the water and helps Tennir with daily tasks. They've been working together for a while when they both start to have feeling for the other.

I read reviews of this book before I read it and most people hated the trope of 'her friend likes the guys so she can't have him even though he doesn't like the friend.' And I get it. I do think it was a little heavy handed but at the same time, I understood where she was coming from. I wouldn't move in on a guy mu friend liked even if he didn't like her. I wouldn't want to hurt my friends feelings. Now is said friend was April and I knew she liked a different guy every week, I'd just have a conversation with her. But then, where would the drama have been?

Maybe the ship attack? What was up with that? When they mention it was coordinated, that it didn't seem random, yada yada but then that never follow through with why they think all that.... It's annoying. I know these are romance books. I read them for the romance. But from book 1 I've liked the world building and the characters. I like the plot of finding humans and bringing them to a safe planet. But what was the attack all about? Don't throw that major event out there, dangle how unique it is and then leave the reader hanging! What happened to the ship that was attacking them? Did Tennir kill all the bad aliens? You mean, none stayed on their ship as, I don't know, backup? Hmm. And the scientist was the one that took them all out? Right, okay. And after he's shot and half exploded (don't think I missed that he took part of the explosion on his back that she never treated it, I saw that) all he's interested in is sex. Right, makes perfect sense. Of course after an attack they will ignore watching the monitors and communication in favor of just getting it on. *faceplam*

I did like this story. I just felt like it was rushed and not enough was explained. I really loved the first two books in this series but the rest, not so much.

[Brooke King · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bothersome

Clark's concern with her skanky friend's opinion throughout the entire book was annoying as heck. Tennir's flirting was sweet and fun,so that gains the book one extra star. May or may not read others books of this series. My thoughts only. Feel free to read and form your own opinion.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book seven in the Alien Series a well written story that kept me turning pages. Clark and Tennir work together in the Lab and are both hiding the feelings they have for each other. Their story has suspense, drama, danger, villains, and romance. The story was well worth reading. I received a copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Lenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute

This was a cute story with two likeable characters. The angst was light but what kept them apart was a little silly. A simple phone call or a better conversation would've resolved it quickly. Overall I did enjoy the book and it was a good addition to the series.

[LuDena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tennir

Clark and Tennir are into each other but do not realize it. They laugh and flirt as they work together . Clark refuses to give into her feelings because her friend April wants Tennis for herself. Good story.

[Paulina Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great read.

This gave me all the feels in all the right places. These two were perfect for each other. Cant wait for the next installment.

[Lit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another amazing read

I absolutely loved this story! The only thing I would change would be to make the book about 3 times longer than it was. It ended too soon!

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too much concern over her bestie’s feelings. A lot of wasted time.

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story

[Marika · Rating 1 out of 5]

⛔️

[Joni (livebythemoon7) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly sweet alien romance. I listened to it in one go. The narrators did a good job, and I enjoyed it.

I received an audio code. This review is honest and voluntary.

[Parminder · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK read. Good series

[ScholasticPerturbation · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love my brainy boys so my main disappointment in this was how shallow it was in length and plot. I had been looking forward to more STORY for this character's story. It's a short fluff piece with trace-paper-thin "issues" for the 2 MCs to get through. 🤷