Primal by Penelope Woods
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Every girl wants a beast. Not all can handle three.
Prima.
Adeline:
On Earth, I was a curious explorer and government research scientist, but I was always looking for more. But when I stepped through an ancient gateway portal, I didn’t expect savage beasts to claim me as their own.
There is nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. They own me now, and they won’t stop until they all get a turn. And though they’re driven to inflict pain for their pleasure, they promise to love me. Forever.
There is no going back. Out here, love is primal.
Very original!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💜❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 🤨😟😳😍
The heroine: Adeline – her father was a scientist and a researcher for the government. He worked on some highly confidential projects. Adeline was very young but her father liked to tell her about what he was working on. Portals to other realms, he said and one day her brought her to his work at a black site. She was supposed to stay in the car, but got out and made her way to the portal. She saw three beings that she was not supposed to see. It made her want to become just like her father, and she dedicated her life to finding the portal and getting back to those beings she once saw.
The Heroes: Cadmar, Magnus, Donovan – They are men, but also beasts from another reality. They protect an ancient tablet and are driven by their urges. They cannot die.
“Cadmar fought and lived by the heart, not his fists or beast prowess. Same with Donovan. His job was to find medicine and gather resources. My job was to kill. It’s how I was designed to be. All I really wanted was to leave.”
The Story: This was a very odd story. The prologue was understandable, but once Adeline was grown, the whole thing became very confusing and disjointed. It was supposed to be like that, but I didn’t like it at all. She was at someplace called The Zone, which seemed to be a portal that was located in a hotel room or an old hostel somewhere in the Amazon rainforest. Apparently people who go into The Zone can’t get out by themselves and once there, they start hallucinating. So everything was very unclear as to what was real and what was a hallucination.
Adeline’s ex-boyfriend Zane shows up in The Zone. He wants her back but also seems to have some ulterior motive. Apparently her mother or her parents paid him to come since she has been single-minded in trying to find the portals to the three beasts she saw as a child. Adeline had once loved Zane but he betrayed her and was sleeping with her best friend. So him showing up was weird, though Adeline wanted to help him out of The Zone. Like I said, it was all very disjointed and hallucinogenic.
The story gets a lot better and everything from the beginning is eventually explained perfectly. The whole world they are is hallucinogenic, though it gets less so as you understand what it is and how it was created. The men/beasts are also explained and though this story is different than any I have read before, I really liked that about it. I liked that it took a while for everything to be explained. I was glad I didn’t stop reading at the beginning when I got frustrated.
One thing I hate about most erotic romance where there is a side storyline of suspense, action and adventure is the fact that it seems like in so many, the story builds to a big finish, where there is a war, some mystery solved or whatever, then when things are all wrapping up, the author doesn’t just end the book, they always have to have one last steamy scene for some reason. So then after that another wrap up is needed, or an epilogue or something. Where in movies, they have the big action sequence and when the main characters come out on top, it ends. I kind of like that better. I never really have the need to read that one last steamy scene after all the action is over.
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