Venery: For the Love of Aliens, Book 3 by C.M. Stunich

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve been abducted by an alien in a cowboy hat.

He needs me to play the role of fake fiancée to appease his family of tentacle-tailed cops. I’ll keep up the charade as long as I need if it means being reunited with Abraxas and Rurik. It shouldn’t be too hard, right? To play pretend…

My life force is now inextricably tied to handsome, gun-totin’ Officer Hyt. But do you know what happens if my new in-laws find out that I’m mated to three different males? Intergalactic war, that’s what.

Eve Wakefield here, currently stationed on the water planet, Yaoh. I’ve been subject to all sorts of unimaginable cruelty since landing family drama, ill-fitting bathing suits, and Hyt’s horrible childhood friend. This woman is not only in love with my (fake) mate, but she’s also disturbingly perceptive. If she tells the Chief of Police that his son and I are liars, we’re dead. Did I mention that liars are executed here?

And what about the king and queen, the ones stuck on that horrible spaceship? Liars might be killed on Hyt’s planet, but Rurik’s people won’t stand for adultery. If they find out, they’ll do worse; they’ll start eating planets and they won’t stop.

Ah, hell. I did not intend to be crowned the queen of aliens. It sounds like the dumbest dumb-dumb alien romance plot ever. But if that’s the only way to save the people I love, can I do it?

Wear the crown, take the throne, save the universe. Yeah, I got this.

Venery

“Such a dumb-dumb alien romance plot!”

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💚💜❤️
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 🙁🤓😍🥰
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Duet Narration

This third installment in the series picks up with all the momentum of Pheromone and Seminal, diving deeper into its wildly imaginative sci-fi landscape. If the first two books built the foundation, this one throws open the universe’s gates and dares you to follow Eve as she juggles political destiny, emotional bonds, and a trio of alien lovers who couldn’t be more different. And somehow? It works.

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🧍‍♀️ The Heroine: Eve

Eve, formerly just a caterer from Earth, now finds herself at the center of a galactic prophecy. Rescued from the trafficking ring that treated humans like livestock, she’s mated to three very different beings: Rurik, a mothman prince chained to a throne that devours worlds; Abraxas, her dragonlike partner who needs her presence to survive; and Hyt, a tentacled cop with an Earthling sister and a lethal cowboy charm.

She’s facing cosmic laws, biological imperatives, and a royal legacy that feels less like a crown and more like a collar. What grounds her isn’t the fate of the universe—it’s the fragile, volatile love she builds with each man. That emotional truth, threaded through high-stakes absurdity, makes her arc genuinely compelling.

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🧑‍🚀 The Heroes: Rurik, Abraxas, and Hyt

• Rurik complicates the romantic dynamic by needing Eve’s blood to survive. Royal, haunted, and emotionally eclipsed by duty, his decision to ransom Abraxas for Eve’s hand in marriage paints her into a corner where love feels more like leverage.
• Abraxas is all soft growls and jungle solitude. Their quiet moments—especially in the wreckage of their crashed ship—carry emotional heft. His dying body, clinging to her imprint, turns mutual survival into a quiet heartbreak.
• Hyt steals the spotlight with cowboy boots and cephalopod charm. His humor and human fixation balance the darker themes, and his moral backbone—rescuing Earthlings from the pet trade—is unexpectedly moving. His gesture, risking death to keep Eve alive, is oddly gallant for a guy who jokes about being the pregnant one.

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🧠 Plot & Structure

The stakes are apocalyptic: Rurik’s absence risks Eve’s life and Earth itself, Abraxas is wasting away without her, and Hyt is living on borrowed time unless Eve seals their bond.

At first, I resisted the reverse harem format, but this trilogy earned my trust. Instead of quick hookups and instant chemistry, Eve builds something distinct and intimate with each male lead, and the emotional payoff lands stronger because of it. Where most stories start with all the men and let the woman catch up, this one puts emotional intimacy front and center—then bends genre tropes around it.

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😘 What I Loved

• That iconic exchange:
Hyt: “Were you pregnant by chance?”
Eve: “I am pregnant.”
Hyt: “Yeah, well, you’re not anymore, but I am.”
• Abraxas, deadpan perfection:
“I do not hate him. I simply want to eat him.”
• The Phalopex anatomy quirk: No fat cells, all appetite. A space-diet fantasy.
• Space pirates that dress like seventeenth century ocean pirates.
• Hyt in full Texas drawl, tentacles and all—somehow absurdly sexy.
• World-building that doesn’t just dress the stage; it’s textured and alive. Alien cuisine, spaceship architecture, cultural quirks—it’s sci-fi with flavor.

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🤔 What Fell Flat

• The audiobook length. At nearly double the runtime of the previous installments, pacing took a hit. The emotional momentum dragged under excessive narration and repeated beats.
• Overstuffed intimacy. The steamy scenes snowballed in the final act, to the point where I wished someone had called for narrative restraint. Once Rurik returned, it felt like a marathon of back-to-back encounters that dulled their emotional punch.

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🎧 Audiobook Performance

Patrick Zeller and Brooke Daniels were phenomenal. Daniels gives Eve a layered emotional range—vulnerable but never weak—while Zeller nails the trio of lovers with vocal clarity: Hyt’s drawl, Abraxas’s deep rumble, and Rurik’s imperious cadence. The duet-style narration keeps things dynamic and makes the tension feel personal.

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