Only the Clonely by Ruby Dixon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The crew of the Scarlet Gaze are figuring out what they want to do now that Lord Straik sa’Rin is no longer running a corsair ship. Some of the a’ani crew want to run a cantina on Risda III.

Kazex just wants Ruthie.

Ruthie just wants to have a nervous breakdown.

Well, she wants Kazex, too. The delicious a’ani chief of security has been a steady, protective, delicious presence ever since she joined the crew. He’s made it clear that he loves Ruthie as she is, nervous wreck and all. But Ruthie’s afraid of what will happen to their easy friendship if she asks for more. What if kissing his tattoos and touching his sinful body changes things? It’s too late for flirting-now it’s time for forever. And forever terrifies her.

The only thing more terrifying? Missing her chance with Kazex entirely.

This is a friends-to-lovers between clones (one alien, one human) and starts a new spinoff series that melds the Corsair Brothers series and the Risdaverse stories.

Only the Clonely

Quarters are for more than just drinking games!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙💜❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 🙂🥰😎😄
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Ruthie – she was a human slave on a slave ship, being brought to be sold. They had her all drugged out and easy to handle. She didn’t really know what was going on, but she was quickly bought by a man named Lord Straik Sa’rin and his two red alien guards. One of the guards takes off her chains and tells her she is safe now. They bring her to their ship, the Scarlet Gaze.

The Hero: Kasex – he is a’ani, which is a race of alien clones, designated by their red color, who were cloned and bred to be slave labor. Until Lord Sa’rin freed him from laboring in the asteroid mines, he and his brethren were forced to do hard labor for little food for years on end. He is now the chief of security on the Scarlett Gaze. He knows as soon as he sees Ruthie that she is his mate, though he doesn’t want to scare her, so he just lets her sleep in his bed while he keeps guard outside the door at night.

The Story: Ruthie thought she was abducted from earth, but when she gets to the Scarlett Gaze, and meets Lord Sa’rin’s wife Ruth, who has her face, she learns she is a clone. Later she meets another who goes by the name Ruth Ann. Ruthie has a lot of internal turmoil with being a clone and having “sisters” with her face. Unlike Kasex, who has always known what he was and had always been around many others with the same face. As Ruthie struggles for her identity, she cuts her hair in a mohawk, gets a bunch of piercings and does whatever she can to make herself unique.

I love that Ruby Dixon started a new series in this same universe as the Risdaverse and Ice Planet Barbarians. This was a good story and had lots of angst with Ruthie coming to terms with the fact that she is a clone. I can imagine how traumatic that would be. I mean, it isn’t just seeing others with your face, which could happen with twins or triplets separated at birth, but with clones, they have memories which weren’t really theirs, they were memories of the person they were cloned from, so it would suck to not be able to trust what parts of you are you and what parts aren’t. I also liked the fact that her “sister clones” each had their own differences and not just their hair and adornments.

Ruthie is a pretty weak character, though that isn’t always a bad thing. Especially at first. She takes steps to make herself stronger. Though she has trouble making decisions, which apparently is a thing with some clones. Whenever she needs to make any kind of choice, she gets all in her head weighing the pros and cons of each choice, until she just can’t decide either way. I loved the fact that Kasex eventually found her a coin that she could toss to make decisions and that helped her quite a bit. He also decided at some point not to give her a choice for little things because he knew she would fret over it when really it wasn’t something even worth it.

This audiobook was done in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Todd McClaren and Rebecca Estrella. Todd was ok, but not great. I mean he was a good narrator, but his voice wasn’t my favorite. I like Ruby Dixon’s usual narrators, Mason Lloyd and Sean Crisden, though maybe it is just what I am used to. Rebecca Estrella had a nice voice and sounded very natural. I did like her quite a bit.

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