This is a generally good role reversal noir action story with a disappointing last quarter when the author seems to remember that she’s writing Omegaverse and it’s somehow obligatory to drop a pile of additional love interests so the main couple can be part of a pack. Thus, what was about an aggressive badass who takes pity on a pretty man in distress, very much in the spirit of the noir part, sort of sputters out just as you were expecting the usual HEA that romance delivers.
Adam and Eve, our protagonists, both don’t want the complication and risk of having a mate, but when they have to go on the run together, they come to see that they are each other’s exception. The story itself isn’t that unusual, as a gruff assassin turned bodyguard with plucky, but damaged dame/former target being hunted has been a trope for centuries. The unique spin was the way that the Omegaverse aspect of the setting simplifies the role reversal. Both could still be their respective genders, but leave off whatever parts you don’t want. She can be taciturn and standoffish, and he can be vulnerable and alluring without requiring this to be too exceptional. But, just when they start to crack and come together as a couple, voila, random other dudes in a perfectly-functional-without-the-protagonists group. It’s is trying for reverse harem, yet ends like it doesn’t trust that an Alpha Woman can be perfectly satisfied to end in a dominant role.
Making things worse on the romance front, there is no chemistry with these extra people and they appear virtually out of left field, speed running into bed. I think the intent was to show how safe the protagonists were going to be with more people to rely on, but the extras feel more like one of those alt communes with compulsory swinging than an instant family. This is a terrible pity, as the pack is supposed to serve as a sort of narrative chorus to try to emphasize that the protagonist, Eve should stop being a such a self reliant lone wolf. Specifically, she mistakes them for a better place to leave Adam while she returns to her solo and possibly fatal ways. But she didn’t need to fuck these people to get that point across, and neither did they do much to compliment resolving the male lead’s own distrust of occupying his fraught role as an Omega.
The discordance of the rest of the pack being added is made all the more awkward by the male lead, Adam, being named in such a paired fashion with Eve. Nothing about this book is built to be an actual reverse harem romance, and I honestly think Moon is probably a victim of the series formula here. This is book six, four of which are female omega/plural male alpha heavy (with a few male betas for spice) and the fifth was male omega/female omega with the conflict being about the former accepting her compulsory harem if he wanted to be with her. As with the usual problems of putting the femdom at the ass end of the series, Bad Alpha is a monogamous romance shoehorned into a poly, reverse mostly male dominant setting.
And really, it didn’t have to be that way. The Omegaverse, a byproduct of slash fanfic, started as an m/m way to still explore things like pregnancy, it has its own tropes and rules, but nothing is hard and fast. And not all Omegaverse stories are harems or poly packs, and it’s not hard to find F/f, M/f or M/m where it’s just about that couple. Of course poly romances can and do work, but this one clearly wasn’t and tried to do that anyway to its own detriment.
Plus, it undoes something else. While most of the books Moon wrote in this setting are about a group of dudes who love each other and their magic girl, the remaining high m/m and M/m quotient make male omegas normalized. Eve’s place in the setting also suffers from the general implication that being a female alpha is exceptional. When you try to toss her into the alpha/alpha fuck pile and you completely muff the chemistry and point for the other guys to be there, what was largely a female gaze fantasy of watching two dudes fuck just ends up further undermining her. Dominance and grudgingly accepting vanilla/primal sex might be good for you just aren’t that compatible.
That’s not to say there wasn’t parts of this that weren’t good, it’s just that the parts that were bad were so awkward that they leave you wanting to pretend they didn’t happen. You can skim them, and miss nothing important to the main story, but nevertheless they are still there.
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