Book Club Challenge Review: Grim by M.K Eidem

Where did you get the book: Bought

Publisher: Self Published

Release Date: Out now

King Grim Vasteri is the strongest, most feared warrior in the Tornian Empire. He has been sent by his Emperor to find and retrieve compatible females for their dying civilization. Lisa is a widowed mother of two little girls who finds herself and her daughters suddenly in high demand. Will the most feared warrior in the Empire keep and protect them? Or will he allow another to claim them?

King Grim Vasteri is the strongest and most feared warrior in the Tornian Empire. He is the King of Luda, blood brother to the Emperor and his line will die with him. He will have no offspring for no female would join with him for once he was scarred he was considered ‘unfit’. The Tornian Empire has been dying ever since the great infection caused the birth of females to become a rarity. Since then they have been searching the known universes for compatible females. The Emperor’s discovery of a compatible female on a slave ship changed that. He’d ordered Grim to find his Empress’ home world so more ‘unprotected’ females could be obtained, knowing Grim would never be allowed to Join with one.

Lisa Miller is a widowed mother of two little girls, Carly and Miki. Her husband died just a year ago, after a long battle with cancer and she misses him immensely. Friends want her to start dating again but in her heart, she knows there isn’t a man on the planet she could love like her Mark. Who could love their girls like their own. Therefore, she’ll stay alone.

When Lisa is discovered ‘unprotected’ at her husband’s grave, she wakes on an alien ship heading for an alien world. Refusing to accept this she confronts the large males, demanding she be returned to her children. Seeing his chance to have a female, Grim agrees to accept and protect her offspring, if she agrees to Join with him and only him. Realizing this is the only way she can retrieve her children Lisa agrees and the Tornian Empire changes forever.

*Blurb taken from Goodreads*

Has: A few weeks ago we challenged you to pick a selection of books for a book club/review which had *ahem* interesting premises. Well, you all decided on <em>Grim</em> by M.K. Eidern which we will be discussing today! However, despite the promising blurb and that epic looking cover, the book was a dud for me and a slog to get through, and it was a good lesson for me to check out the sample instead of falling for the Goth He-Man like cover which had me at hello.

 

Lou: I really liked the cover and I really liked the blurb of Grim. I had finished the Lizard sci-fi book and was riding high on sci-fi. Unfortunately, I had some issues with Grim which meant I had to pull out of this review because I didn’t get past chapter two.

 

*hands over review to Has*

 

Has: Within the first few pages, I knew this was not going to be a good reading experience and I really had to push hard to finish the book. The book was riddled with editing and punctuation errors. The story also had an awkward writing style, and it didn’t help that it was written in the present tense. The plot didn’t offer anything new on the whole captive alien SF romance theme, and it was very underwhelming because it didn’t provide a campy fun element because I kept getting thrown off by the bad editing.

 

I also found the heroine to be a bit of a Mary Sue, and the hero, Grim, didn’t live up to to reflecting the mantitilicious cover either. He growled a lot, made judgements about how Lisa, the heroine, would react, and growled a lot more and apologised after upsetting her. And this was the source of their conflict but it was okay because insta-lust-turned-to-love helped to get over their issues pretty quickly. Then there was was the dreaded kids. Lisa’s two daughters called Miki and Carly who were so one dimensional and wooden. And did I mention they were annoying? But the most grating thing for me was the mention of an alien who had Down’s Syndrome. I should note that this character was not human and it totally threw me off the story. I can suspend my belief about the unrealistic factors (this story had the bucket loads) such as the way Lisa handled her being kidnapped, which she got over pretty quickly. Like in five minutes.  Lisa’s precociously, annoying daughters also had no qualms about being taken away to another part of the universe. They accepted meeting multi-coloured aliens, and the only time they came alive and not like the stepford kids was when they were arguing over crayons and the colour of their bed-spreads, although they were still annoying.

 

There was some promise in this book but it really needed a good editor and a copy-editor to handle the plot issues and pace. As well as the editing errors, which was pretty bad, they were sentences like, ‘dotted on her’ instead of ‘doted’ which is not a good thing. The final conflict uncovered a very complicated and convoluted plot which went on for a LOOOOOOOOONG time. It took forever to be resolved and I felt like it would never end because another twist would come up or another attack. I just got bored by this point and just wanted this book to end. I think authors like Laurann Dohner or Michelle M. Pillow who have written alien captive series have done it better and with more charm, humour as well as the fact they have incorporated editors for their books. I don’t get the high ratings and reviews this book has because there was not one redeemable reason to buy this book because it was so shoddily edited. I would have given it more leeway there had been some editing.

If you have bought the book then I hope you enjoyed Grim better than I did. I hope the book in the next challenge will be better. I will also definitely check out the sample before falling for the cover because this was a warning on what happens when you choose blindly because it has Goth He-Man smouldering at you.

I give Grim a D