I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked this book up on Amazon. I was intrigued by the concept, was pulled in by the sample, but the age of the work (from 2006) had me a bit hesitant about what I would find as I continued on. The few older ones I've read haven't been that amazing and tend to shy away from the sexy times.
Genesis did not disappoint and felt pretty fresh despite the fact it's almost 15 years old. It was so terrible in a lot of ways, but it was fun.
The story centers around Bri, an "almost 30" year old woman running a from-home business selling pre-prepped meal kits to busy working moms (years ahead of Blue Apron and similar services), who is driving home from a conference in the dead of night, freaking out, and gets abducted by aliens. Car and all. Shit goes sideways from there as she's entered into the creepiest habitat, and she tries to figure out exactly what they want from her. When finally forced outside into the main habitat, Bri discovers large, Hulk-like yellow alien males who look mostly human and gets creeped out by how intensely they stare at her, especially one.
Kole is the leader of his people, the few who remain of the Hirachi, an alien race that's been getting picked off by our lead Bad Aliens for generations to be used as slave labor in their mines. There's a problem: thanks to over-grazing by the BA, the Hirachi have adopted survival strategies that are now threatening to extinct their people, driving our BAs to start a forced breeding program to keep their labor supply strong. This backfires when the female Hirachi go rogue and sets the story line into motion. One day Kole sees a couple new small females in the enclosures opposite of the male's breeding pens, and he's quickly smitten with one. He almost immediately shadows the pair to try and learn their language so he can communicate with them and figure out why they're on the ship with them.
A lot of things happen, and just when it looks like it's going to be Bri and Kole after a round of breeding, O'Connor shakes things up and throws Bri in for a round of breeding with Dansk. Not going to lie, I'm a total Dansk fangirl, he was stupidly romantic and sweet. Forget Kole, stay with Dansk, girl.
Anywho. There's a lot of drama that happens at this point.
Eventually they arrive at the planet and things get even more interesting as the crew of female humans finally cohese and become a force to be reckoned with. The book ends with a HFN where Bri gets to have her cake and eat it too, and you know? Bri, Kole, Dansk, and Cory make a pretty adorable family. I can't hate on that. Good on her. The Hirachi have an interesting life cycle and culture that leads to some possibilities that take some time to get used to from a human perspective, and it's interesting to see how cross breeding with humans changes some of that. They're almost human, but if we had evolved from a different category of creatures.
I will leave this review with one of the worst and most odd lines I've ever read in a sex scene. I just. What on earth did I just read?!
He withdrew and pushed again, fighting his way inside of her like a salmon trying to swim upstream.
Now isn't that quite the image?