Book Review for Released by A. J. Ridges

Good morning.

I hope ya'll are enjoying the blog so far. It's been fun writing these posts each day, certainly a good way to start off my mornings. Yesterday I had the opportunity through the Goodreads "Don't Buy My Love" read and review thread, to get my hands on this lovely new book, Released, by A. J. Ridges. Roughly 76 pages, I found myself so curious I just had to start reading as soon as it arrived in my inbox.

Released is filled with steamy hot interactions between the MC’s Dex and Krial, lots of interactions, even memories of interactions, but unfortunately, that was really all there was to the story. Released turned out to be more of an erotica read than an actual plot and storyline story, taking place over the course of about 24 hours of the characters lives. Not that there is anything wrong with erotic, oh absosmurfinlutely not, I love erotic writing as much as the next gal, but I love a bit of story to go with it too.   

The writing flowed very well, it just left me wanting to know what came before. I felt as if I had been dropped in at the end of the story, with so much alluded to, like the training sessions and the trials they underwent, yet I never got to  see them unfold. I wanted to be taken deeper into the world, shown how the trials to choose the "Chosen One" got started and how the government of Noval got the other planets to force their people to participate. 

There is a great deal of potential in the idea of the trifederation, the ritual selection process, as well as the weather disaster that caused the planet to be short females. It just feels a bit like insta-love, reading the story in this manner, without being privy to all of the ways Dex and Krial came to be attracted to one another over the course of the training. It would have been wonderful to learn more about Krial and what kind of a life he led before being forced to travel to Noval, or how long Dex had been a trainer and how he felt about the training process these men were being forced into. And I really wanted to know more of who both men were outside of the training as well. 

The originality and the ease with which I got pulled into the story and found myself wanting to learn more made it a good read though. This one gets 3 Dancing Hamsters from me.