I fully hated this. Boring, creepy, & infuriating.

This begins with our alpha “hero” (eyeroll) Rick rescuing Kai and his younger siblings from an abusive household. Kai is sheltered teen who’s been abused for years, and he doesn’t trust Rick automatically–a totally natural reaction which Rick accepted with grace as he slowly built trust with Kai and his siblings. JUST KIDDING! Rick immediately terrifies them, shouts at them, then freezes them out and neglects them, never once communicating what is going on! What a champ! Bonus points because the reason he freezes them out is that he’s lusting after the abused teen boy literally on DAY ONE! Makes my skin CRAWL.

Eventually, he realizes he’s being a garbage person and decides to step up and do is alpha duty. He’s magically transformed into the most caring and helpful alpha on earth, and the story carries on from there like he’s never done a thing wrong! What a perfect leader! All the alphas are BAD, but not Rick! Oh, but if you’re, say, a family of abused children who are distrustful of alphas after hearing about all the bad alphas, buckle up for a scolding! This book will victim blame you with glee. Every character, especially Kai, is victim-blamed HARD by the side characters. They’re guilt-tripped for being distrustful of Rick, who they HARDLY KNOW and who is NOT COMMUNICATING TO THEM. The side characters who spout BS like this are meant to be seen as heroes, too. WTF? Worse than what the side characters say, Kiki Clark made the most bizarre decision to make Kai’s internal thoughts extremely self-deprecating and imply these are the RIGHT thoughts. He repeatedly thinks thoughts like he’s “bad” and “mean” to be protective of his siblings & wary of Rick–a stranger who has not spoken to him or his siblings at all. The largest influx of victim-blaming scenes occur a matter of days after they’ve left their abusive family and filthy shed they lived in. The lack of empathy from the writer towards these characters completely shocked me. The victim-blaming doesn’t stop after Rick steps up, either. It carries on to the end. It’s truly a disaster so bad I’ve added Kiki Clark to my blacklist of writers to avoid at all costs.

There’s some pedophilic undertones to Rick’s behavior toward Kai, which make me want to vomit. Kiki Clark completely leans into parent/child dynamics for them which sent off alarm bells the entire time I read. For example, during a pack interview about his childhood trauma, Kai crawls into Rick’s lap to cry and also, I guess, rub excitedly. Yes, in the middle of talking about his trauma, he’s sitting horny in Rick’s lap, acting 1/3 his age, and doing this all with an audience. No thank you. This dynamic is a really bad fit for such a poorly written childhood abuse story. While the dynamic is not explicitly dd/lb, it may as well have been, and this book needs a content warning for it, because GOD. Don’t blindside people with a kink that, when it hits wrong, hits REALLY wrong.

The book is riddled with issues that appear relatively small in comparison, too. It uses traditional pack dynamics, so the Kincaid pack is very predictable and boring. The role of the alpha is an unlikable dictator in these. Every side character is a dull trope. There’s these absurd info dumps that are awful to listen to/read, literally PAGES of solid dialogue telling backstory, no breaks. The plot is the dullest waste of time, involving characters and issues that readers have no reason to care about. And, god, SO much of the book is this boring, superficial plot.

Narration is not good. Just read the ebook.