I find myself reading a lot of Omegaverse* lately, which lead me to stumble upon Jillian West as a recommended author from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. I have finished two of her novels so far, Knot Guaranteed and Knot Wanted, and found them to be essentially the same book, but an enjoyable book.
Wait. Let me explain: enjoyable if you are into why choose romance that takes place in an alternate universe. Which is not to say that it reads like fantasy or science fiction, only that the world created is very like ours but with a few key differences. If your preferences run toward traditional romance, these books are probably not a good choice for you. Personally, I find the idea of having a group of men falling all over themselves to make sure you are cared for in every way to be extremely appealing. The misogyny that inevitably arises anytime you have a hierarchy like this one, less so.
One thing I found to be noteworthy is that Knot Guaranteed specifically features a female main character that is very much on the neurodivergent scale. She self-describes as autistic with hyperactivity disorder. There are several bits where she stims or has meltdowns that felt pretty authentic and made me wonder if the author is autistic or if she has someone in her life with those issues. I loved that her love interests were not put off by any of this. In fact, they all found her to be delightful, and several of them did research on how to best support her needs. It was a welcome relief to find a romance series where the fmc was not solely responsible for doing the emotional heavy lifting.
These books do take place on tour with a rock and roll band. There is drug use and groupies do abound, but not necessarily in relation to the principal relationship(s).
3.5 out of 5 stars for two fun little romps that I enjoyed while reading but will probably have completely forgotten the details of in a month.
*From Wikipedia: Omegaverse, also known as A/B/O (an abbreviation for “alpha/beta/omega”), is a subgenre of speculative erotic fiction, and originally a subgenre of erotic slash fan fiction. Its premise is that a dominance hierarchy exists in humans, which are divided into dominant “alphas”, neutral “betas”, and submissive “omegas”. This hierarchy determines how people interact with one another in romantic, erotic and sexual contexts.