Series: The Virgin Hunt Games #1
Publication date: January 18th, 2021
Synopsis:
EARTH, YEAR 2324
Melody Simmons desperately needs to fill her bank accounts with credits that could help her family climb out of near poverty. And in the Virgin Hunt Games, that means enticing as many hunters as possible to bed her. The downside? Billions of viewers from all parts of the galaxy would be watching her fall from virtue with avid interest.
Alien Damon Banscott despises everything about the Virgin Hunt Games. Except the fact he can now legally destroy his enemy in the games. He is in this only for revenge. Then Damon sees one of the beautiful hunted and, for a moment, his heart stops beating. He'll fight to the death before allowing another hunter to touch and deflower Melody.
But while the hunters get more credits by pleasing their captive mate sexually, the hunted women receive more by finding their pleasure with any of the hunters who weren't their assigned mate.
The hunt is on...
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Review:
After one has experienced the love and obsession of The Hunger Games there is always the constant hunger for something to fill the void the end of the series brought about. I was one of those kids who worshipped the series almost as much as the Harry Potter series and went into a terrible book hangover when finishing it. After reading the synopsis I wondered if this would be the adult romance version of the beloved series I longed to recapture the feeling of. I was intrigued by the premise and hoped for the best.
Damon had one goal and that was to kill the man who killed his father. As that is not particularly legal in normal life situations finding out his enemy had entered the Virgin Hunt Games was his chance for revenge. Then his gaze meets Melody's and his determination falters. Now he must struggle with the choice between protecting Melody and revenge. Finding out that the best to infuriate his enemy is by sleeping with Melody makes her even more enticing. But if he had to actually make a choice between the two what would he choose: restoring his father's honor and making his kingdom proud or saving the woman who has stolen his heart?
Melody's family is chronically poor to the point where she's willing to sell her virginity to the highest bidder. To ensure racking up enough credits to save them from poverty, she's more than happy to sleep with Damon to start the ball rolling. But once she sleeps with him once can either of them let each other go to pursue their other desires?
There is not a lot of substance to the story. While trying to describe the book to my husband he was thoroughly confused. It seems a bit too complicated and also seemed to focus on the women sleeping around while men are supposed to be loyal to their mate. There was sex, it seems, every single page of the book. I understand it's an erotica but... there is a line between erotica and literary porn. This was more the latter. Don't get me wrong, Damon and Melody were likeable characters, but the games aspect seemed secondary to them just get naked every second of every day.
Also... there were some aspects that blatantly ripped of The Hunger Games... For example, in the Hunger Games they had the infamous Tracker Jackers. In this book they had Barbed Jack Beetles who would use electrified stingers to stink a person to death before laying their eggs in the dead body. So a more grotesque version of Tracker Jackers. In the Hunger Games Peeta is injured and is then nursed back to heath... Damon, same. I wanted a book that was similar to the Hunger Games not something seemed more like a pornographic fanfiction of the well known series.
However, always a small ray of sunshine in a stormy sky, I was intrigued to see what the future held for the couple being as Damon was a prince and that would, in itself, lead to some issues with having a commoner princess. I will probably read the next book in the series out of morbid curiosity but I can't say I was blown away by this book. I see what the author tried to do there but, in my personal opinion, the sex scenes need to be pulled back a bit to keep it from being literary porn and the games themselves need to be a bit revamped so they weren't a faded photocopy of The Hunger Games.
