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Ensnared

Ensnared by Rita Stradling

I received a free ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis (from Goodreads)
"Alainn’s father is not a bad man. He’s a genius and an inventor. When he’s hired to create the robot Rose, Alainn knows taking the money is a mistake. Rose acts like a human. She looks exactly like Alainn. But, something in her comes out wrong. To save her father from a five year prison sentence, Alainn takes Rose’s place. She says goodbye to the sun and goes to live in a tower no human is allowed to enter. She becomes the prisoner of a man no human is allowed to see. Believing that a life of servitude lies ahead, Alainn finds a very different fate awaits her in the company of the strange, scarred recluse."

Review
The premise sounded very interesting: Beauty and the Beast retelling in the near-future with robots and AI. But it really really fell flat.

I read the first few chapters, then put it down for a couple of months. Eventually, I decided to give it another go so I could give it a fair review instead of a DNF (did not finish).

What threw me off first and foremost was that the writing was not very good. The dialogue felt stilted and unnatural. At times, every movement a character made was narrated. Things didn't flow. Hopefully there will be another round of editing before this goes to print.

Then the plot itself was a bit far-fetched: Alainn had to pretend to be a robot so her dad wouldn't go to prison for not having the robot done in time. This plan was proposed by said robot, Rose. I guess they just needed a way to get Alainn into the house to have a sexy relationship with Lorccan.

I've said this before, but for me it's characters that make or break the book. And they broke this one. Lorccan had some horribly abusive childhood that has left him disfigured and he has never left his house. And yet this is explained briefly, once. He also falls in love with Alainn thinking she's a robot. Just....... No. Their whole relationship is weird and I could not get behind it. And the random sex scenes are quite explicit.

Alainn was slightly better? She had a hero complex, apparently stemming from when she and her best friend were kidnapped as teenagers. This was also not fully explained. In any case, she pretended to be a robot, then at some point she suddenly developed feelings for Lorccan, and then she's in love with him and perfectly happy to live her entire life in this house with him. (?!?!) After she was a huge outdoor sports person. Also she had a fear of elevators that is never explained.

Redeeming aspects: The AI robot, Rose, and her whole subplot of evil world domination (well, kind of). That took up a large chunk of the middle to end of the book and made me like it slightly more. I would have liked more exploration of the theme of AI and what makes people "real" humans, etc. Also, the monkeys! There are AI monkeys that apparently do all the housework and they were the best part of the book.

In summary, a kind of creepy futuristic semi-retelling of Beauty and the Beast. There is a lot of potential for this to be good, but it would need some good editing and work. As it stands, I would not recommend.


Rating
I give this book 2 stars.


Details
Genre: Sci-Fi?
Language: Some instances of strong language.
Sex: Very explicit sex scenes.
Violence: Some fist fighting.
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