Close Liasons // Anna Zaires

Close Liaisons (★★☆☆☆)
By: Anna Zaires
Genres: Urban Fantasy, Erotica, Paranormal
Pages: 258
Format: Paperback
Features: aliens, sex
** spoiler alert **

Mia is a college student living in New York. When we meet her, the only concern she has is a Sociology paper she’s supposed to be writing. That all changes quickly, however, when she catches the eye of a Krinar – a member of an alien race that appeared a number of years ago to “co-exist” with humans on earth.

Enter sexual tension. The Krinar (Korum) is domineering, and seems to take an almost unhealthy interest in the younger (read: a few thousand years younger), human woman. As far as he is concerned, she puts up a token amount of resistance before it turns into a matter of “I really have no choice.”

Move on to the subplot… where she also, apparently, “has no choice.” With her roommate being afraid of what’s happening to Mia’s life, she manages to get Mia involved the “resistance” against the aliens. They want to use her as a spy, as she is intimately involved with Korum (though to hear her rail against it in her head it is completely out of her control and she hates him but oh my god what an orgasm).

So now Mia has both her body supposedly working against her, as well as feeling a need to do something to protect her race against the invading alien race dead set on harvesting women as sex slaves and taking over completely.

I swear, I feel like I’m summarizing the plot to a D-rated 80’s porno sci-fi flick.

A number of events repeat themselves in annoying frequency.

1. The number of times Mia gives in and has sex with Korum no matter how mad, disgusted, pissed off, or otherwise absolutely SURE she won’t ever sleep with him again she is. Give him five seconds in her presence and she’s a goner.

2. While there are a number of sexual encounters insinuated but not detailed, the ones that are inevitably end with Mia berating herself, her self-control, willpower, etc. and reminding herself she’s only doing this because she has no control, has to pretend everything’s okay, yada, yada, yada.

3. How often can Mia puzzle over how completely up-side-down her life has turned? Granted, she’s a naïve junior at a university in New York. Yet we discover she’s got an internship lined up for the summer prior to her senior year, she’s going for a degree in Psychology and knows exactly what she wants to do with it. This is a woman of conviction and strength, yet you barely get to see it. You’d think, with a focus like that, she’d have better things to think about than sit around wondering how everything got so out of control. She’s a walking contradiction.

And then we get to the end. Korum knew all along Mia was betraying him, and did nothing about it. The whole time, Mia was afraid of Korum, afraid that he would kill her once he found out what she had been doing. Yet, for all of that fear, when everything hits the fan… he simply takes her hand, offers to take her to see her parents, and whisks her away to one of the Krinar compounds, steady as you please.

As a whole, the book left me completely unsatisfied. The intimate scenes were lacking, the emotion between Korum and Mia was barely thought out (at best), and every time there was a discussion with or about the resistance, I found myself rolling my eyes, skipping it, and realizing in the end – I didn’t miss a darn thing. I got this book off of Amazon for free, but I can’t convince myself spending the money on the next book to see if it gets any better will be worth it.

Rated two stars purely for the potential of the story, if the author just puts a smidge more thought into the story rather than the sex.