This is an OK sci-fi alien romance, but the H was hard to like. It gets 3 stars from me.
I thought it was more lust than love, especially for Liara. They just didn't know each other well enough to fall in love so quickly. I get that Kravath realized Liara was his fated mate when she touched him, but Liara was human -- so she wouldn't have felt the mate bond.
One complaint is that the story needed more character development. I wanted more backstory on both Kravath and Liara.
Kravath was difficult to like. He was a king, and behaved with all the arrogance that was typical of that role. He treated Liara terribly, especially at first, when he forced her to be the nanny for his nieces and nephew. Even after he realized she was his mate, he still occasionally reverted to his "angry and commanding" king mode, even with Liara. I honestly didn't understand why Liara fell in love with him.
Liara was likable, and I liked that she was so good with Kravath's nieces and nephew. She seemed to instinctively know how to deal with children, even those from an alien race. I did think, though, that she was mostly in lust, not love, with Kravath -- why would she fall in love with him when he forced her to work for him, and then sometimes yelled at her, too? I just didn't buy it.
My rating system is below.
1 star -- Hated it, or did not finish. I usually only give this rating if some of the content is truly objectionable to me, like if one of the main characters does something really awful, and gets away with it.
2 stars -- Didn't like it. This rating usually means that I thought the writing wasn't very good, the editing was terrible, I didn't like the characters, or it had other major flaws.
3 stars -- I liked it, but had some minor issues with it. This rating means that there were minor editing issues, the story needed more character development, it was just too unrealistic, or had some other fairly minor issue. The majority of books I read get this rating – I do not consider it a bad rating.
4 stars -- I liked it a lot. This is a high rating for me, and I rarely give a higher one.
5 stars -- I loved it, and will probably read it again. Very few books are good enough to get this rating from me. The ones that do are usually classics.