A review by amanda_p
Dangerously Mine by A.M. Griffin

4.0

Oh, man. I enjoy A.M. Griffin's work quite a bit—having started off with her latest series with the Game Warden—but the thing that finally pushed me into reading this earlier one was all of the pearl-clutching and gnashed teeth reviews about it.



Yes. At times I'm a contrarian and read things just because they cause such negative reactions. What of it?

I think the book I read may have been different than the one many here have reviewed, though: there's mention of multiple F/F scenes in many of the reviews, but there was only a single LIGHT scene and certainly no antagonistic female "rape" scene in the version I read. (There isn't a female antagonist in the story I read. Period.) I'm not a skimmer; it simply wasn't in mine. So now I'm intrigued: is the 2017 Kindle edition different than the previously released ones?



Anywho.

I can only review the story I did read, and what I was presented was pretty enjoyable, though a bit different than standard cookie-cutter romance fare. Meaning: I liked it and wished more authors strayed from the approved formulas.

We have our FMC, Eva, who has come from possibly the crappiest timeline Earth has ever seen: the aliens came, were not friendly, enslaved all 7.8 Billion of us in a matter of months, then stripped the planet of all natural resources for profit. If that isn't the most gutting thing ever, then I don't know what is. Earth and humanity? Just gone, and we didn't even do it to ourselves. Eva has serious abandonment issues that keep getting stirred up throughout this story, giving her a sore spot that she tries to hide behind a bad-ass exterior and lots of snappiness. I thought the physically strong martial artist aspect of her character was great, but if reality needs to crash this party...
she...isn't going to be beating up males described as being 2 feet taller than her and likely outweigh her by a minimum of 200 pounds—but honestly they sound a lot heavier than that. Her size is never given in the story, but I envisioned her as a 5'8"-ish woman who was maybe a buck eighty at best. Our 7'6" protagonist says she's about chest height with him, so I feel comfortable with that guess.


Taio is the king of a small moon colony his home world has started, and he's having a difficult time balancing what he wants that will make himself happy and what is in the best interests of the community he's responsible for. After meeting Eva, Taio wants his cake and to eat it too, and this...can make him super frustrating at times. Dude, decide which is the most important and focus on that. For crying out loud. More than once I wanted to set him on fire for being an alien idiot— but he's not human and has his own circumstances he's trying to work with, so.... He's very self-absorbed and that does not change over the course of the story. But most of his species show this same trait, so I can't really fault an alien for being an alien and not behaving how I would want a human man to act.

Together these two have a lot of chemistry and what starts as a physical attraction quickly develops into much deeper feelings that take them both by surprise.

Overall, I really liked this story, and I could not stop reading until it was done.

My biggest issue with the story is this: Hi, I get that The Straights apparently need trigger warnings for Bisexuals and same-sex sexual interactions (