Publisher: Penguin Audio

#AudioBookReview: And Now Back to You by B.K. Borison

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> C+ Reviews
#AudioBookReview: And Now Back to You by B.K. BorisonAnd Now, Back to You (Heartstrings, #2) by B.K. Borison
Narrator: Max Meyers, Brittany Pressley
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy, workplace romance
Series: Heartstrings #2
Pages: 464
Length: 13 hours and 3 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 24, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Two competing meteorologists are forced to find common ground in this opposites attract, When Harry Met Sally inspired romance, from New York Times bestselling author B.K. Borison.
Jackson Clark and Delilah Stewart have had their fair share of run-ins over the years, often ending in disaster. While Jackson thrives on routine and organization from the comfort of his radio booth, Delilah loves the spontaneity and adventure out in the field. When they’re partnered against their will to cover the snowstorm of the century, they find themselves scrambling to figure out how to work together.
Eager to be taken seriously as a journalist, Delilah offers Jackson a deal. If he can help her ace this assignment, she’ll help him rediscover his long-lost fun side. With an undiscovered chemistry burning beneath their clashes, the unlikely partnership quickly tumbles into an easy and surprising friendship.
But when other feelings start to enter the equation, can Jackson and Delilah withstand the storm? Or does what happens in the mountains, stay in the mountains?

My Review:

Readers of First-Time Caller, the first book in the Heartstrings series, have already met the radio station’s “weather boy”, Jackson Clark. But they haven’t really met his opposite number from the TV station that shares the parking lot, TV meteorologist Delilah Stewart. And honestly, neither has Jackson, even if they have been sharing passive-aggressive sticky notes via each other’s windshields for months.

So when this book begins, we only know Delilah through Jackson’s VERY uptight opinion, and he doesn’t know Delilah AT ALL no matter how many assumptions her truly terrible parking skills have caused him to make. And have, as Jackson discovers in this book, thoroughly handled his half of the ‘assume’ cliche. Because he’s certainly making an ass of himself when it comes to  Delilah.

Delilah, on the other hand, is already dealing with a much bigger asshole so she’s not all that bothered by Jackson’s relatively minor grumpy assholery in comparison. Her part of that particular equation is more of the sly, cutting dig variety than the rather excessive hate-on Jackson seems to have for her.

But they both report on the local weather in Baltimore. Or, Jackson certainly does, and Delilah does when her hateful asshat of a boss lets her do her actual job instead of demeaning, deflating and downgrading her at every turn.

Back to the weather – or as Delilah’s signature sign off goes, “and now back to you.” The you in this instance being the entire city of Baltimore, because the weather outside is about to get frightful even though the holidays are definitely over for the year.

It’s late March and a freak blizzard is barreling down on the city. Based on multiple weather models that both Delilah and Jackson are following, the storm is going to hit the mountains in Western Maryland with ‘the big one’ late in March with plenty of heavy, damp late season snow and gale force winds. It’s going to be the weather programming opportunity of both of their careers.

Because their respective stations need ratings and advertising dollars, her TV station and his radio station decide to team Jackson and Delilah up for a trip to tiny Deep Creek on the far western edge of the state to report on the storm as it hits. They are both excited by the opportunity but neither is thrilled for either the company OR the circumstances.

Jackson has EXTREME stage fright to the point of panic attacks. Delilah is certain that her evil, abusive boss intends to use this trip as an opportunity to do even further damage to her career – even if she can’t figure out how he’ll manage that at the distance. Jackson, for his part, is very afraid that his issues ARE the intended damage.

Once they are on the road to remote Garrett County, they have the chance to get to know the real person behind all those passive-aggressive post-its. A person who shares some of the same damage but took that trauma in utterly opposite directions.

Which means that they DO have an opportunity to meet in the middle. If they’re each willing to share the load AND step outside their respective – and opposite – comfort zones in order to get there.

With just a little bit of help from a big storm, a full hotel, and some truly evil connivance from Delilah’s boss that has some unintentionally excellent consequences for everyone involved who DESERVES a shot at a happy ever after.

Delilah’s evil boss DEFINITELY not included.

Escape Rating C+: I picked this up because I did, in the end, love the first book in the Heartstrings series, First-Time Caller. I’ll admit that that one opened with a bit of a rocky start, but it was a rocky start that was definitely a ‘me’ thing. Once Aiden and Lucie got into the radio booth, they made the kind of magic that just made the whole story shine.

And it was the hope of a similar turnaround in this second book that made me stick with it long after I might have otherwise bailed. Because I wasn’t seeing that chemistry no matter how much I wanted to. Instead, I saw a few too many similarities between Jackson and Delilah in this book and Callie and Thomas in Tuesday’s book. Which was itself a replacement review for an entirely different book that didn’t work all that well either although for entirely different reasons.

Even though I started And Now Back to You in audio, I finished in text because I was just done and needed to move on, but was still hoping that the magic would happen between Delilah and Jackson. Although I’m not sure it did.

The thing is that the start of this book reminded me a bit too much of First-Time Caller. They’re not the same situation but the situations were both very uncomfortable for me. Lucie’s situation involved an inner circle of well-meaning but overbearing and intrusive people. It was a bit of a personal nightmare but felt real and right for the story.

Delilah’s situation was outright triggering. Her workplace isn’t just toxic and her boss isn’t merely abusive although both things are certainly true. The way that he was abusing her, doing his damndest to tank her career PUBLICLY and make it so that she’d be forced out of a career that she’d worked so hard for and was so good at hit a bit too close to home. The way that she just kept sucking it up and being a mouse about the abuse, even inside the confines of her own head, wasn’t a situation I wanted to read about.

In short, her boss is an EVIL, abusive asshole, and she’s become the meat shield for the entire station through no actual fault of her own. The situation is terrible to the point of outright abuse (and let’s not forget the gaslighting) and she’s just taking it and I just wasn’t there for it even though I was, well, there in it by reading/listening to it.

OTOH the personal situations that Jackson and Delilah came out of were heartbreaking but very well done. It made both of their traumas understandable AND explained why their reactions to variations of the same damage went in such different directions. Coming out of childhood abandonment and chaos, he turned rule-bound while she turned sunshine  which are both plausible even though they’re caused by the same thing.

However, the way that we get to see the man behind the panicking mask more clearly long before we see what Delilah’s hiding under snarky sunshine made it easier to empathize with him – and made her continued digs at Jackson’s expense seem more mean-spirited for a bit too long. Their initial relationship as passive-aggressive frenemies did not work nearly as well as a road to romance as Aiden and Lucie’s first meeting.

In the end, I stuck with this in the hopes that magic would happen after all. And it kind of does, but only after the halfway point and even then it wasn’t nearly as magical as I hoped it would be. And I know I’ve been having a bad week this week, but I honestly didn’t see the purported resemblance between this book and When Harry Met Sally. Which is a real pity because a variation of the iconic scene in the diner might have been just what this story needed.

Of course, and I sincerely hope so, your reading mileage may vary.

#AudioBookReview: First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: First-Time Caller by B.K. BorisonFirst-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1) by B.K. Borison
Narrator: E.J. Bingham, Hathaway Lee
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: borrowed from library, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Heartstrings #1
Pages: 420
Length: 11 hours and 54 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A hopeless romantic meets a jaded radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.
Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.
Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life-or lack thereof—she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.

My Review:

Lucie Stone and Aiden Valen make real magic in the radio booth – but first they have to get there. And that takes some doing on the part of practically every single person in Lucie’s life – including her twelve-year-old daughter.

Which is pretty much the dichotomy that powers this entire grumpy-sunshine romance.

The first part of the story is the setup. Aiden Valen – who broadcasts as Aiden ValenTINE, is the host for a romance hotline on an independent Baltimore radio station. A station he is literally tanking, all by himself, because he’s fallen out of love with love and is spreading his disillusionment all over his show.

Obviously, Aiden is the grump in this pairing.

Lucie, on the other hand, is the sunshine, even though her life doesn’t have quite as much sunshine as it ought to have. At least not according to her daughter Maya, her daughter’s dads, her coworkers, her bestie, and seemingly everyone else in her life.

And that’s where the conspiracy comes in, the fun begins, and the magic happens. Because Lucie is all about the magic of love, even if she’s never managed to find it for herself. Which is why her daughter concocts a scheme to call into Aiden’s radio show on her mom’s behalf, in the hopes that Aiden can help Lucie find what she’s looking for.

Lucie hears her daughter on the phone in the middle of the night talking with a man. From under the covers, the better to muffle the sound. At first, Lucie goes ballistic on both of them, not unreasonably so. But it’s late and she’s tired and she’s more tired of being lonely than she wants to admit.

So she ends up talking with Aiden for the rest of his shift, and she’s honest about life, dating, the universe and pretty much everything. And it goes VIRAL. Lucie’s struck a chord with the entire Eastern Seaboard. With Aiden along for a ride he never thought he’d EVER want to take.

Because Lucie still believes in magic, while Aiden doesn’t even believe in love. Until he does.

Escape Rating B: I ended up with an epic amount of mixed feelings about this one. The second half of the book – once they get into the booth together and start talking to each other and to the people of Baltimore who are shipping it like mad – it really is magic.

But getting there, that first half of the book, was a bit of a slog. It seemed as if every single person in Lucie’s inner circle was a boundary-stomping jerk. While this setup may have been exactly what Lucie needed, the way it happened and the way they all, collectively, went about it was absolutely NOT what she wanted or how she wanted it.

The relationship that Aiden and Lucie develop once they get into the booth – and out of it – was all about consent. Specifically hers. But getting her there was the absolute opposite, a campaign conducted by the people who did love her and did mean the best for her with their interference. But does that mean it’s okay to ignore someone’s expressed wishes because you ‘mean well’ and where does that end? It’s a situation that I find triggering and others may as well, but your reading mileage hopefully varies.

Once they interact directly with each other, the whole thing is utterly magical. I adored their banter, I loved the way they played off each other, and it was extra fun that it seemed as if even though we were experiencing this story through their alternating first-person perspectives, that Aiden didn’t have a clue about his own feelings, while Lucie steadfastly avoided getting a clue that the entire city was shipping the relationship that neither of them recognized they were having.

I also adored that Lucie was in a male-dominated profession (she’s a car mechanic), that she’s doing it well and is well respected by her co-workers, and that all four of her somewhat grumpy, older, male coworkers are shipping it along with the rest of Baltimore just added to the fun – and to the magic.

Speaking of magic, the audiobook is magical, and it’s also a terrific medium for experiencing this particular story. The experience is all the better because the alternating perspectives are voiced by not one but two narrators, Hathaway Lee for Lucie and E.J. Bingham for Aiden. Because we’re so deeply inside their heads for this, it worked so much better that each had their own narrative voice to go along with their own internal voice.

In the end, the good outweighed the ‘less good’ parts of this story, although I have to confess that I’d probably have bailed if so many friends hadn’t talked both the book and the author up so much. It also helped that the radio show parts of the story reminded me very fondly of Turn It Up by Inez Kelly, a story I read a while back that was also about co-hosts on a radio program that talk their way into romance with the same kind of banter.

Which leads to one last comment. According to the author, this book is meant to invoke fond memories of the movie Sleepless in Seattle. Whether it does or not is certainly in the eye of the beholder. Howsomever, a second book in this Heartstrings series has been announced, And Now, Back to You, inspired by When Harry Met Sally. I can’t wait to see if the iconic scene from that movie is replicated – and how!

A- #AudioBookReview: Kills Well With Others by Deanna Raybourn

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Kills Well With Others by Deanna RaybournKills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age, #2) by Deanna Raybourn
Narrator: Jane Oppenheimer, Christina Delaine
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Killers of a Certain Age #2
Pages: 368
Length: 10 hours and 19 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“Much like fine wine, battle-hardened assassins grow better with age.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a summons from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster with an iron fist, some serious criminal ambition, and a tendency to kill first and ask questions later. This new nemesis is murdering agents who got in the way of their power hungry plans and the aging quartet of killers is next.

Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster who seems to know their next move before they make it. Their enemy is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their killer experience to get out of this mission alive.

My Review:

The wifi wasn’t THAT bad. No, seriously, I took the same trip on the MS Queen Mary 2 last summer, the one that the team from Killers of a Certain Age takes from New York City to Southampton in the early stages of this caper – and the wifi honestly wasn’t that bad. The rest of the ship, at least the parts we saw of it, were very much as described.

No murder though. At least, not as far as we heard!

Then again, Billie and company are very, very good at their jobs, and the whole point of sending in an elite team of assassins is for them to make the murder look like it never happened. Not that Pasha Lazarov isn’t very, very dead when Billie’s done with him and his teddy bear, but that his death doesn’t look like a murder at all.

Don’t worry, the teddy bear is fine. Pasha, not so much, but then that was the point. Even if, as Billie suspects, he was the wrong point.

Still, contract complete, case closed. Right? Wrong, as the team discovers when they make their way to their safe house and discover that the house isn’t safe at all. In fact, it’s on FIRE.

And suddenly, so is this story. Because someone in their organization has sold them out, put a target on their backs while aiming them at the wrong villain for the wrong reasons even as the real monster plans to toy with them as they chase the true mastermind around Europe while that mastermind plots revenge, mayhem and a gigantic payday steeped in blood and decades in the making.

It’s all about the ‘one that got away’. For the traitor, it’s about a future they let slip out of their hands. For the villain, it’s payback for the murder of their father – who truly was an evil bastard – at the righteous hands of Billie and her team. For the team, it’s about a case they were never able to close and a luminous piece of looted Nazi art that they were never able to restore.

Until now. If they survive. If, instead of age and treachery beating youth and skill, age and skill can manage to beat youth and treachery one more time.

Escape Rating A-: The first book in this series, Killers of a Certain Age, was both an absolute surprise and an utter delight. Just as “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” – a catchphrase whose origins Billie and her team are just the right age to remember and appreciate – nobody expects a quartet of sixty-something women to be an elite team of assassins. Not unless they remember the movie Red with Helen Mirren playing a character who could easily have been one of Billie’s aliases, or who have fallen in love with The Thursday Murder Club series, whose main character is also quite a bit like Billie and is also played by the same actress in the upcoming TV series.

While that was not as big a digression as it could have been, that digression is a bit on point for this story.

The main story here, as it was in the first book, is told from Billie’s first-person perspective as she and her team are in the midst of the case at hand – even as that case goes utterly off-kilter and entirely out-of-whack. Not that even at the outset it was as ‘in whack’ as it should have been.

But the case does itself digress on occasion, to cases and contracts and errors and omissions in some of the team’s earlier contracts, told from an omniscient third-person perspective. At first, it seems as if those trips down memory lane are for context about their past and their skills, but as the net closes in so too do those memories as various nooses tighten and the past catches up to the present.

At the same time, the case in the present is a wild thrill ride, interwoven with a whole lot of tips and tricks about hiding in plain sight and escaping without a trace and the way that even their oldest tricks still work fantastically well because the weakest point in ANY security system, even the most technically advanced and supposedly unbreakable, is always the human factor. And those haven’t changed at all.

Initially, the story moves just a bit slowly, as, well, cruise ships are wont to do. But the reader catches Billie’s nagging suspicion that something isn’t right fairly early, and we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop right along with her.

When it does – or actually when it catches fire – the story is off, not just to the races but to a whirlwind tour of both sides of the Mediterranean in pursuit of a dead woman with a plan for revenge so cold that she’s willing to take out her own family to see it done.

And still, and yet, and at the heart of it all is the ride or die sisterhood of these four women who will and have, killed and nearly died for each other over the course of four decades – and their bickering willingness to argue and fight and still protect each other and the hostages to fortune they have all gathered along the way – sometimes in spite of themselves.

Just as I wasn’t expecting that first book, I wasn’t expecting this to turn into a series. Hoping, certainly, but not expecting. Which means I’ve been waiting for this with the proverbial bated breath, was absolutely thrilled to get it, and was utterly absorbed by it in both text and marvelous audio – switching back and forth so I could find out how they got out of this mess that much sooner.

All of which means I’m left in the exact same place I was at the end of Killers of a Certain Age. I had a ball with Billie and her found family, and I would love to ride with this crew again. But the story ends in a way that could BE the end. They all do sound like they’ve found the respective happy ever afters that none of them thought they would live to see. Or in Billie’s case, even want.

Howsomever, the first book started because there was something rotten at the heart of their organization that, let’s say, interfered with their pending retirements. They got dragged into THIS case because there was something that was rotten at the heart of their organization that interfered in an entirely different way with their retirements.

When this case gets wrapped up, they make a new and better deal for the retirements they all actually seemed to want this time around. Which doesn’t mean that they got all the rot out of the organization this time around. In fact, I’d kind of be surprised if they had. And very happy about it – possibly much happier than they’ll be if I’m right.

#AudioBookReview: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming + #Excerpt

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Excerpts
#AudioBookReview: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming + #ExcerptI Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com (Cosmic Chaos, #1) by Kimberly Lemming
Narrator: Hazel Addison
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: alien abduction romance, Romance, romantasy, science fiction romance
Series: Cosmic Chaos #1
Pages: 304
Length: 9 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A hilarious and sexy romance about a woman who gets dropped on a strange planet only to fall for not one, but two, aliens, from the author of That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf.

Dorothy Valentine is close to getting her PhD in wildlife biology when she’s attacked by a lion. On the bright side, she’s saved! On the not-so-bright side, it’s because they’re abducted by aliens. In her scramble to escape, Dory and the lion commandeer an escape pod and crash-land on an alien planet that has...dinosaurs?

Dory and her new lion bestie, Toto, are saved in the nick of time by a mysterious and sexy alien, Sol. On their new adventure, they team up with the equally hot, equally dangerous Lok, who may or may not be a war criminal. Whether it be trauma, fate, or intrigue, Dory can’t resist the attraction that’s developing in their trio....

As this ragtag group of misfits explore their new planet, Dory learns more about how and why they’ve all ended up together, battles more prehistoric creatures than she imagined (she imagined...zero), and questions if she even wants to go back home to Earth in this hilarious and steamy alien romance adventure comedy romp.

My Review:

Today is Valentine’s Day, which screamed for a romance to be today’s book. I really want to claim that aliens made me do this book to celebrate the day, but that’s not my story.

However, it is, it oh so definitely is, Dory’s story. It’s right there in the title, I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com. Because Dory was abducted by aliens, and she is trapped in what the aliens believed was a rom-com.

Dory’s mileage definitely varies on that. Her story definitely turns into the ‘rom’ part of that phrase. It also, certainly does have plenty of humor in it. But part of that humor is that the aliens intended to set up a rom-com without having an actual feather of a clue as to what either ‘rom’ or ‘com’ truly mean to humans. Or, for that matter, to the Sankado, the species they’ve already abducted.

So Dory isn’t trapped in a rom-com. She does, however, totally and absolutely, get ensnared in the romance part of that equation. Times two.

And it’s a screaming ‘O’ of a blast every wild and crazy step of the way.

Escape Rating B: I picked this one up because a) that spoileriffic title and b) the author’s Mead Mishaps series was incredibly fun (start with That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon and be prepared to both blush furiously and ROFL while doing so.) Not to mention c) the book comes out on Tuesday, today is Valentine’s Day and the perfect timing of the whole thing could not be ignored. At least not by moi.

The trope this story wallows in is a familiar one. Of course it’s the ‘Aliens Made Them Do It’ ™ plot device – the one that the author is using and not the aliens making them do it. Also, the author is using it correctly while the aliens flubbed nearly all of their attempts – which is part of the fun of the thing.

The thing about this particular trope is that it screams for a ‘dubcon’ (that’s dubious consent) warning that can literally be seen from outer space. Dory, along with her partners Sol and Lok, clearly do consent to everything in the moment, but the reader can easily get hung up and thrown out of the story on the question of whether it’s true consent because the aliens have drugged all of them to create that consent at the outset.

Dory occasionally throws herself out of her own story because her desires in the moment and her resulting behavior are contrary to everything she ever knew about herself.

Some readers will be totally squicked out. Some will be all into the scene. Because I was listening to a chunk of the story, I was both blushing furiously (listening to a third party describe a sex scene is just weird) and getting a bit weirded out by just how much the way her partners talked sounded like grooming her to accept things she otherwise wouldn’t.

(BTW the audio narration was FINE, I only switched to the ebook because I was all in and reading is just plain faster.)

In the end I concluded that Dory was just discovering that she was really into the kink of it all and that was okay. But your reading mileage may go through some rough patches along the way and it may definitely vary.

The part of the story that’s just purely funny – in a very wry and totally satirical way – is the way that the particular aliens who got them ALL into this mess created said mess through bureaucratic insanity, academic pomposity, and shoddy research. They created the initial mess, dug themselves a hole and threw the first results of that mess into it, realized that they’d screwed up and then dug some more and made the hole bigger.

Anyone who has ever done research or worked in either a big bureaucratic organization or in academia is going to see the situation for the hilarious and rueful set up that it is and just laugh until tears run down their face because it’s true and awful and truly awful and so very much more common than anyone wants to admit.

But this is still Valentine’s Day so I need to get back to the romance. While the aliens may have been trying to set up a rom-com, in truth this is a sex-into-love romance times two. Dory and her partners create a really hot triad. And in an entirely different kind of warning, while this trio does set fire to the sheets, there is actual fire but no actual sheets. The sexytimes, as Dory herself would say, are “hot as balls” and the scenes never, ever fade to black.

Whether or not that’s your thing, it certainly turns out to be theirs. Even if it’s not you’ll still want to slap the alien meddler who is not just watching, he’s taking notes. Dory certainly does – and who can blame her?

In the end, there are multiple facets to this wild romp of a romance. There’s the meddling aliens who screw up and set off the whole entire mess. There’s the incredibly hot romance between Dory and her two sexy partners, who fall in love while an incompetent research intern meddles with their lives every step of the way.

Last but not least, there’s the two sets of sentient beings, alien to each other, who have been thrown together against their wills trying to make the best of it – in spite of yet more alien meddling. That’s clearly going to be the throughline for the entire Cosmic Chaos series, as this story ends with that incompetent research intern failing upwards into a promotion that Dory and her friends are sure to make certain he regrets at every turn. Or at least I certainly hope so and am looking forward to finding out.

The true level of Cosmic Chaos in this story has to be experienced to be believed, so I’m going to leave you with this excerpt from the opening of I Got Abducted by Aliens… so that you can experience a bit of Dory’s voice for yourself. One last thing, that lion, to quote Dory, “THE FUCKING LION!” turns out to be the very best wingman a displaced human could EVER have.

Excerpt from I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming

“Fuck, I’m dead?” I snarled, gazing down at the desert. A bright light was pulling me farther into the sky. Which was probably good, right? I’m not the religious type, but I think the general consensus is that up is good.

“All right, not all bad, I guess?” I turned to have a look around, taking in the sights before— “THE FUCKING LION!” I screamed, trying to kick away my murderer. The sandy-brown fur of its mouth was stained a telltale red. I put a hand to my throat, flinching when pain erupted. My hand came back covered in blood. “All right, so you definitely didn’t miss. What is going on?”

The lion ignored me; instead his eyes remained transfixed by what he saw above us. I stilled and looked up to see the clouds shimmering. A darker spot opened up in the sky. A greenish light sparkled out of it until the force pulling me sped up to a breakneck pace. The light became blinding, and I . . . I must have fainted.

The next thing I knew, I was in a tank. My body felt too heavy to move. There was a tickling sensation on my neck. Reaching out, I tried to touch the glass front of the tank but couldn’t reach it. When I cried out, bubbles floated uselessly out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure how long I was floating as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

Muffled chirping met my ears. I struggled to open my eyes, but the room was so damn bright.

Why . . . why do I smell cotton candy? Am I having a stroke? I thought that was burnt toast. Dammit. I knew I should have taken that CPR class. What smell meant you were having a stroke?

A sharp zap to my neck shocked me awake. Birds were chirping all around me. I struggled to get up. Something dug into my arms, so I thrashed. Strings lined with suction cups snapped off my arm with little pops. The birds’ chirping grew angrier as I pulled my other arm free. I blinked and looked around to see what looked like . . . owls?

“What the fuck?” I asked. Mutant-looking owls with large fluffy ears fluttered around me, chirping and fussing. Their feathers ranged in color from simple blacks and grays to the colorful blue and orange plumage you would normally find on a tropical bird. Which, frankly, is a wild range of colors for one species to have. I wonder if it’s gender-based.

Focus.

Macaw-like beaks took up a third of their face. Their flapping wings ended in tiny three-fingered hands. One of them was dressed in a white robe and it was trying to probe me with some horseshoe-looking gun thing.

I smacked it away from me and got to my feet. “One of you better start chirping in English,” I warned. Fear and rage caused the threat to come out in a stuttered shout.

The birds were unaffected.

Unfortunate.

I touched my neck, unsure if I’d truly died and gone to some bird hell. But all I felt was smooth skin. When I inspected my hand, not a drop of blood was found. I checked the other side; still nothing. “If I’m not dead, how am I healed?”

The room was lined with rows of cylindrical tanks filled with green liquid. I peered closer at their contents to see the face of a sleeping woman floating in the tank. Her round face looked serene. Long braids fanned out around her face. A few tapped their beaded ends against the glass. The hair rose on the back of my neck as I took in each tank, noting that every one of them held a person. I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up from the nightmare. Yet when I looked around again, the pods and their occupants remained. Worse still, I noticed that all of them were women.

Reality sank to the pit of my stomach. I was on an alien spaceship. Those aliens only felt the need to capture women, and I’d just woken up on an operating table. If this wasn’t hell, it was about to be.

Screaming, I stumbled away from the nearest alien, then snatched a tray off the counter next to the table where I’d woken up. Glass vials and unsettling-looking tools crashed to the floor when I flung it at the nearest alien. Two slightly bigger Owlish came at me with what looked like cattle prods. I grabbed hold of one and kicked off its owner, then swung wildly at its partner. The bird’s squawk was cut short when my stick hit the side of its head, sending the creature flying back. Not knowing what else to do, I just swung at any of the little aliens that came within striking distance.

Farther into the room was a dome-like door leading to a hallway. I leapt over two of the Owlish, caught my foot on one, then tripped and fell on my ass. The fall knocked the stick out of my hand; it ricocheted off the ceiling and slammed into a glass case lining the wall. Blue goop spilled out all over my hair. It weighed down my wild red curls until they felt like rivers of slime. “No! No strange alien goop in my hair, dammit!” I wailed, scrambling back on my feet. “Fuck, my ass is gonna die. I’m so gonna die.”

One of the Owlish squawked like a penguin and stomped closer to me. I jumped up, shoving it aside before I sped down the hallway. My vision blurred, causing me to stumble against the wall. The slime dripping down my head grew hot, and the skin where it touched tingled. “Oh, gross. This better not be poison,” I said, wiping it away quickly.

I burst into the first room I encountered to see that it was full of bigger penguin-looking bird aliens and slammed the door shut. “Nope.”

I swore all the way down to the next room and locked myself behind the door. Then I looked around to see that I had made a poor, poor decision, as this room was full of so many more Owlish, some with the cattle prods, and, of course, the motherfucking lion.

My murderer was floating in a ray of light on a table, completely unaware of its surroundings. Flapping noises beat on the door at my back and the Owlish in the room began chattering angrily. Those with cattle prods advanced.

. . . Fuck this.

“You know what? If I have to die”—I raised a finger to all the bird fuckers in the room—“we’re all gonna die.” I grabbed the nearest Owlish and threw it at the others charging forward.

Excerpted from I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming Copyright © 2025 by Kimberly Lemming. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.