Y’all… This warranted an immediate phone call to my former review writing partner, Pattykins.
Do you remember several years ago when Patty and I read When Life Happened by Jewel E. Ann and it had such a shocking twist that I set up a separate Facebook group so that we could talk about the twist after you all read it? Guardian by Sara Fields came real close to that level of what the fuck just happened, which I would not have expected at all from the cover. I mean, it looks like your average bear shifter romance on Kindle Unlimited, but there is a record scratch moment the like of which you very rarely come across.
It seemed fairly straightforward from the blurb and trigger warning listed on Amazon. “A beast must claim his mate” and the standard trigger warnings for spankings and rough sex. Okay, so immediately I understood this to be a possessive, alphahole shifter romance with lots of sex and spankings, just like hundreds of other shifter romances that I’ve read on KU. And it was, at least to start.
Hector is a grizzly bear shifter who considers himself a guardian of the woods he lives in. He’s out hiking when he comes across 18-year-old Emma. She’s alone and obviously lost. Turns out she was separated from the scared straight group that she was out hiking with. He decides immediately that she needs to be taught a lesson about wandering off and that he’s the one to teach it to her. You can imagine what happens next given the trigger warning listed above.
It’s at this point that it goes off the rails. Hector is escorting her back to her hiking group when they run into an Army convoy. He tells her to stay put while he goes to investigate. Of course she decides to follow him and gets herself captured by the Army people. Hector literally thinks, I need to turn into my other other form, the horned purple alien to go get her back.
Wait. WUT.
At this point, besides the needle scratch noise, all I can think is the chorus to “one eyed, one horned, flying purple eater.” Because how could I not? We find out that the Army dudes are there to support a secret army installation that is trying to communicate with Aliens. They’re about to get a response, just not the response that they wanted. And it’s at this point that we learn that not only is Hector an 8ft tall purple alien, he can shoot lasers out of his eyes when he’s in grizzly bear form.
After managing to find THE most perfect gif in the history of review gif-ing, I’m going to quit while I am ahead. Honestly, this thing is so ridiculous, that I couldn’t finish it, but I felt like it definitely needed a review just because of the visceral response it evoked.
Rating: DNF
Available on Kindle Unlimited.