This was everything I wanted Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match to be and I’m going to go into great detail about it, including light spoilers for both, so just know that this book is awesome and you should read it.

SPOILERS BELOW!

I really liked the idea of Angelika Frankenstein; she’s a scientist (cool), she’s unlucky in love because men in the 1800’s ew (got it), she reanimates a corpse and they fall in love (I’m still here), she reanimates a corpse after hand selecting different body parts (including his…well…you know) for the specific purpose of making this undead man her husband (aaaaand that’s where it lost me). There was so much potential to go into the power dynamics of a woman in this era with a man who was essentially created by her and has no memories and is totally dependent on her but it just never got fleshed out (hehehe) and so it felt kind of…ick. 

Enter this book. Qalu is a scientist (cool) who is unlucky in love because even on another planet dating is ew (checks out), she downloads Helix’s AI into a biosynthetic body that she did make herself, and that she does incidentally find hot, for the specific purpose of saving him (aaaaaaand THAT right there is a good setup). Qalu recognizes the power dynamic of being the one person Helix is now dependent on and because of that she holds back her feelings of attraction so she’s not taking advantage of his vulnerability. This also creates conflict when he’s inevitably attracted to her (because she’s awesome) and there we get the sexual tension we’re all here for without any of the ick. And because there’s no ick, we get to have fun along the way and feel very satisfied when these two alien freaks finally end up together.

Super fun series; on to the next one.