...I don't even know how to begin talking about this. I can say that I didn't rate this book because the simplicity of a rating in no way encapsulates the many feelings I have about this novella.

It's not even that it's just bad. It is, but there's so much more to unpack that dismissing it as bad doesn't feel like enough. That would be a disservice -perhaps to me, who read this thing with my own two eyes, but maybe other readers as well. It’s here that I should point out that I’m not going out of my way to tear down the authors. I have nothing personally against them. It just so happens that this novella had the unfortunate effect of taking me on a rollercoaster of emotions that I feel the need to document.

While I have read many romance novels (my romance shelf is clocking in at 120 right now), I have gone out of my way to avoid reading alpha/beta/omega (ABO) romance novels. There are a few reasons for this. I’m very familiar with this trope thanks to the truly inordinate amount of time I spend reading fan fiction, but ABO fics have never really been my cup of tea. That being said, I’ve read more than my fair share of them for various reasons –a unique premise, a summary that hits so hard it practically forces my hand, desperation when I’ve read every other fic out there, and the incremental lowering of my standards.

Despite my experience, ABO fics have never been my preference. This is due to a few staples of the trope that few authors are able to handle in a way that I enjoy. This includes: strictly defined gender roles and social stratification between alphas, betas, and omegas; the sexism that follows; the nature of a fated bond introduces a whole host of consent issues; the way that social roles tie into sexual roles; the nasty-ass dirty talk; and how same-y all the stories end up being.

The most damning of these problems is the way that the alpha/beta dynamic echoes, reinforces, and glories in extremely defined roles that women have been fighting to escape for fucking ever. Alphas are dominant, muscle-bound, providers and protectors. Omegas are small, “lithe” (everyone is fucking lithe in these books), looking for a big strong man, more than happy to get knocked up, and oftentimes, especially in fanfics, shit on and oppressed by society. They’re bitchy, catty, prissy, and their entire life is fulfilled by finding their fated mate and having his babies.

What makes everything worse is that the alphas and omegas are controlled by their biology. The characters going into a “rut” or “heat” like animals and act…like animals. Often, as with this Grabbed novella, characters who met a few minutes ago discover via scent that they’re “true mates” and then almost immediately have sex and “claim” each other, which is typically more permanent than marriage. Characters typically have little to no control over ruts or heats and when these periods start, the characters give in to their biology and fuck anything that moves in the general vicinity. The consent issues just leap off the page and smack you across your damn face.

If I hate reading about women characters who are treated like this, why would I enjoy the same bullshit being heaped on a man’s shoulders? Part of why I find this so disturbing, apart from the obvious, is that ABO is such a thing. It’s huge in the m/m romance category. It sits somewhere weird with me that women, a main demographic of both writers and readers in the m/m romance category, are so interested in these stories. ABO romances celebrate a biological cementing of dominant/submissive gender roles. Doesn’t it make anyone else uncomfortable? No? Just me over here in my corner?



Wait, you may say, not all ABO romances are like that! There are plenty of feisty omegas and enlightened alphas who don’t just think about sex!

…I mean, I guess. I would call that the exception, not the rule. Or I guess I’d say that no matter the characters’ personalities, when the romance finally boils down the biological needs, their personalities kind of collapse and fall back into the basic trope. There aren’t enough authors deconstructing, mashing up, dissecting, and seriously and intentionally writing in a way that critiques the basic tenets of this trope.

When it comes down to it, I guess no one is obligated to. But I think they should.

I know I’m not some enlightened, liberated genius for having this opinion, but these thoughts definitely affected my experience when I read this novella.

This brings me to why I read this novella in the first place. Why, you may ask, would I voluntarily read a book based on a trope that I generally try to avoid? …I’m not really sure. I’ve hit a rash of bad romance novels lately and I was desperate and kind of apathetic? The book blurb made me laugh out loud a little bit? I thought it might actually not be that bad? I though the romance between the characters might overpower the creepy ABO dynamic?

I was wrong.

It doesn’t seem quite fair to unload on a book due to the basic premise, though I just did and I stand by it. What helps is that I can say with confidence there is so much more to critique about this novella than the fact that it’s ABO.

The writing –somewhere between bad and forgettable.

The characters – hollow stereotypes.

The romance – nonexistent.

While the writing was serviceable –in the sense that I could understand the sentences- there was nothing special there. It’s a credit that there were no egregious habits that made it impossible to read, like comma abuse.

The characters were the barest outlines of people with no substance. Noah, the alpha, was a tough-talking soldier jock with a gentle side but who has problems with feelings. Preston, the omega, was a rich kid whose partying ways were a mask to hide how neglected and unloved he felt.

Preston’s father, a conservative senator, was cartoonishly evil

Spoiler

–from lying about Preston’s mother, sending her to a psychiatric ward, and kicking her out of the house to running an omega trafficking ring to not caring about his kidnapped son to trying to force Preston to have an abortion.

Preston is constantly a damsel in distress

Spoiler

–he’s kidnapped, pressured to get an abortion by his father, sent to a prison masquerading as a psychiatric facility, and nearly raped by an orderly. And that brings me to another point of contention I have with his novella. Considering how short the whole thing was, each of these events happen in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sequence of events. Let me break the novella’s literal, actual, I’m-not-fucking-kidding timeline down for you:

Day 1 (night): Preston snorts cocaine, takes ecstasy, drinks alcohol, is kidnapped

Day 2 (night): Preston is saved by Noah and co., Noah and Preston discover they’re true mates, have sex and claim each other as mates (remember, this is like marriage). Preston becomes pregnant.

Day 3: Preston is returned to his father, everyone is informed that Preston is pregnant, Preston is sent to a psychiatric facility against his will

An undetermined amount of time, but what only really seems like a day or two based on other characters: Preston is in the psychiatric facility, an orderly attempts to rape him, Noah and co. break him out

Some other indeterminate time later, but what’s probably about a month: Preston gets an ultrasound

Another month later because shifter pregnancies last three months I guess: Preston is chummy with his new in-laws, confronts his father, flies to Detroit to find his estranged mother, reconciles with her, brings her home, and gives birth

I have a problem with that timeline. It’s bad storytelling. It’s uninteresting. There is no romance. Where, in between a guy who’s sleeping off a cocaine binge and getting animal married and pregnant, was there room for romance? When did these characters get to know each other? Why would a professional soldier have sex with and get animal married to a person who’s been kidnapped and who he knows is coming off a cocaine binge?

There is no growth. No character development. Noah starts as a tough-talking soldier jock with a gentle side but who has problems with feelings and ends as a tough-talking soldier jock with a gentle side but who may or may not have problems with feelings. Preston starts as a rich kid whose partying ways were a mask to hide how neglected and unloved he felt and ends as a…doting parent and lover whose hard drug use is never addressed beyond wondering if his party hangover could have affected his pregnancy right at the beginning. It’s as if the “party Preston” never existed the instant he hears that he’s pregnant. He doesn’t fight to break habits or to discover a new way to live now that his life isn’t consumed by spiting his father. His personality –the masks to hide his true self, his prissiness (and it’s saying something that I can only come up with two personality traits) melt away until he’s nothing but a generic pregnant person by the end of the novella. “You’re dick is never getting anywhere near me again!” the pregnant person yells while in labor. Ha. Ha ha.

*Edit: Glancing through other reviews reminded me of this. There were extremely casual mentions of and even jokes about torture. Mutilation and waterboarding happened off screen, but were nbd to any of the characters. Who the fuck jokes about waterboarding? That's fucked up. It definitely gave me pause.

At the very end, Preston has this line: “Family wasn't about position or titles or blood—it was about giving and receiving and just pure joy.” It’s odd to me that this is the revelation that he’s come up with, that this is the moral I’m left with. Preston never though family was about position, titles, or blood. That was the whole point. He knew his father was a social climber who used his family as a tool and hated him for it. The novella always made it explicitly clear that Preston's father was WRONG.

“Family…was about giving and receiving and just pure joy.” Lord is that bland. And especially damning, it has nothing to do with the infinitesimal character development Preston experienced. It’s just generic, feel-good, frippery about the joy of family.

This novella happened in front of my eyes in a blaze of light. I came out of it feeling baffled, a little concerned, and with questions. Why was this book like this? Why was it the way that it is? Why is the m/m romance genre filled with books that I don’t think are good? How is it that I can read a whole thing that I don’t actively enjoy, but it’s just not-bad enough that I continue to put myself through it?

Why are we here on this planet? Why are books? What’s the meaning of anything, really? Language is just made up squiggles on a page. Language is meaningless.

After I recovered from the unintended existential crisis that this novella sparked, my opinion essentially boils down to this: why would I want to read about two cardboard cut-outs getting together in a situation that smacks of consent issues?

The answer is simple. I don’t.