Smuggler鈥檚 Contubernium (Mea Lupus Series #1) in Reverse Harem Revolution

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Smuggler鈥檚 Contubernium (Mea Lupus Series #1)

Kahaula

Start date: June 17, 2023

Finish date: June 27, 2023

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Jun 19, 2023 Helen 2.0 rated it liked it

Shelves: sfr, spicy, series-dropped, golden-retriever-bf, fastburn, support-womens-wrongs, space-opera, poc-mc, anti-heroine, poc-author

Move aside, 鈥減orn with plot鈥�... now we鈥檝e got 鈥減orn with worldbuilding鈥� apparently!

My #1 gripe with this book was the complete lack of editing. There was an error in nearly every paragraph. Authors, please don鈥檛 skimp on editing, especially line/copy editing! This made my reading experience so much worse. As it was, I started and ended the read vaguely irritated, so lots of other issues I might have shrugged off seemed worse also.

So, back to the porn with worldbuilding鈥攖here was so much sex in ...more

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Sep 04, 2023 Sadie Forsythe rated it liked it

Shelves: blah

3.5

This review covers all three books in the series.

I really liked the first book a lot, then liked each subsequent one in the series less and less. I liked all the characters individually. I liked that there was a pre-existing m/m couple in the grouping, and no one even considered that the new relationship with Kara needed to alter that. I liked that the men showed emotion. They cried and mourned and feared. I liked that Kara was in charge. It takes a little while for the men to come around to 3.5

This review covers all three books in the series.

I really liked the first book a lot, then liked each subsequent one in the series less and less. I liked all the characters individually. I liked that there was a pre-existing m/m couple in the grouping, and no one even considered that the new relationship with Kara needed to alter that. I liked that the men showed emotion. They cried and mourned and feared. I liked that Kara was in charge. It takes a little while for the men to come around to the realization, but there is actually a little fem-domness to the book. I liked that the men wanted (desperately) to be fathers and have a family. I thought the book dealt with some interesting issues in intelligent ways. The world is interesting, and the writing is very good鈥攖he editing is utter crap, but the writing is good.

But as the series progressed, I thought it became exceedingly predictable. Which I think is largely because it鈥檚 actually a very simplistic plot. The first book set the rest up for SO MUCH, and then the author seemed to plateau at the bare minimum. Kara was so ultra-powerful that she faced no true challenge. Every accolade, power, or position available seemed to be rightfully hers, and the relationship with the men was reduced to nuanceless worship.

I absolutely hate when an author sets up a villain, spends time building up how villainous a villain is, and then the reader meets said villain and discovers that they are actually just misunderstood or have been duped but aren鈥檛 really a villain at all. This series did this not once, but twice鈥hree times, if you count that the heroine is initially set up as the dangerous, dastardly Ferryman but is actually moral and upstanding. If I鈥檓 being generous, I could call these situations red herrings. But they felt a hell of a lot more like inconsistencies or plot drift to me.

If you don鈥檛 like pregnancy and baby tropes, avoid this series. (If you like them, snap it up.) This book is a surprise baby trope times ten. And honestly, I didn鈥檛 hate that getting pregnant was the direction the story went. It made sense, in context (even if I normally hate all the baby tropes). What bothered me was that once Kara met her men, and especially once she got pregnant, a lot of her dynamism as a character was put on a back burner in favor of babies, babies, babies, babies, babies鈥nd for all that, the children remain in the background, never being characters of their own.

Then I found the ending a little too deus ex machina, rushed and anti-climactic. All in all, I really liked book one. I didn鈥檛 hate the second and third books. But I feel kind of meh about them. I am definitely going to try more of Kahaula鈥檚 books, though. ...more

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Jul 01, 2023 Biola rated it it was amazing

The plot, the world-building, the betrayal, the loyalty, and also the well written sex scenes --- this must be a different version of the book because my version did not have any spelling errors that I could find plus I learned new words --- 10 over 10 no notes. That cliffhanger took me out, cannot wait to go ahead and give this author my money for book 2!!

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