Lee Smith vibes, and I think if it had been longer and less smutty and more plot-based, it could have given Smith a run for her money.

I will say that the beginning of this book was a lot better than the end, and the plot definitely got derailed by what I considered to be a superfluous amount of sex scenes that were a bit too sloppily written and written too similarly, at that. He had street smarts and wasn't an abusive jerk, and his possessiveness could be attractive at times. I don't normally go in for the super-alpha caveman type guys, but if you're going to write them, this is a great example of how to do it. At first, Riana finds him terrifying, but even though he's rough and scary, he isn't cruel and there's a hesitant tenderness in some of his interactions with her that is actually quite endearing. He fights another man for Riana and she ends up living in his cell, the only lockable one in the prison. Said man is Cain, a lone wolf figure who doesn't play with the social hierarchy of the prison planet, but is respected nonetheless for his superior strength and odd but innate sense of violent justice. A sympathetic guard tells Riana at the beginning of her imprisonment that her only chance for survival is to find the strongest man there and offer herself to him in exchange for protection.

It's a violent free for all, in the vein of Battle Royale, with resources, food, and safety all completely up in the air unless you're one of the strongest. Any violation of any sort results in imprisonment, and once you get there, there's no getting off. It's set on a prison planet, where the prisoners are kept beneath a poisonous sea. Whenever I find a science-fiction/futuristic romance, I always get really excited, because it's basically the equivalent of all my adolescent self's mental head cannons. I'm a science-fiction girl at heart, having been reared on Star Trek and Star Wars, and space opera is especially near and dear to me. Somebody on my friends list was really pushing me to read this and I'm sorry I can't remember who because I'm normally really hard to please, but I actually did enjoy this book a lot more than I thought I would. This book is currently FREE right now in the Kindle store!

Hold by Claire Kent