A review by salem48pm
Captive Mate by Eliot Grayson

dark emotional funny hopeful reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Oh lanta, i just finished re-reading this one and it had me all up in my feels :') in the best ways. Arik is probably my favorite character from this series or at least top 3. His life has been fucking brutal and so fucking relatable and I love the emotional growth he goes on throughout this book. He's still the prickly, sassy person he's always been but seeing him realize he's found a family, a mate, and community is just fucking beautiful. It can be read as a standalone, but the only reason I re-read this was because I realize that I'd never read the first book in this series which he obviously cameo's in and I liked seeing that little extra bit of him. Also Ian and Nate were much more tolerable/ less obnoxious knowing their backstory in this re-read lol. Regardless though, even just as a standalone, it's a book I'm going to hold close. Enjoy friends đź’ś

I mean just look at these fucking quotes đź’ś - these are the more emotional ones, but for real this book had me in stitches sometimes laughing

"I’d had alphas use me to prove how powerful they were before — by conquering me, or trying to. Taming me. Owning me.  Matthew felt powerful because I’d found him worthy of having me as a gift that I gave, not as something that he took. Or rather, he’d taken me, and I’d loved it, but he’d taken what I freely offered.  And that was everything."

"I'd never had allies. Never had someone I could count on since my brother’s past had caught up with him, forcing him to leave me. [...] It was the difference between standing on the edge of a precipice in a high wind, every moment of balance a struggle, and having a brick wall suddenly appear at your back to lean on."

"I’d been running, not living the life of a carefree vagabond. Only problem was, I hadn’t been running to anything — just away from the possibility that if I tried to find a place for myself in the world, I’d lose it. Again. The way I’d lost my brother, or the way I’d never even known my parents. I had nothing to show for those thirteen years. I might as well have curled up in a hollow tree and hibernated it away; if it’d all been erased from my memory overnight, there wouldn’t have been much to miss."

LOLZ like this one:
"...You don’t need to keep me on a leash anymore.”  Don’t make the obvious dog joke, don’t, don’t do it…“Maybe I should get you a muzzle to go with it,” I snarled. Oops.