Friday, January 13, 2012

Review- Unknown Futures by Jessica E. Subject


Unknown Futures (One Night Stand #77)
By Jessica E. Subject
Jan 3, 2012
Lesbian/ Sci-Fi
9K words
Publisher: Decadent Publishing


Attacked as a young adult, Jewel is left scarred and alone. She applies to the 1 Night Stand service, believing no one can see past her appearance to love her. But she doesn’t expect to be sent to a space station where her date could be any number of unusual alien species.

Flavia left everything behind to be one of five humans working for the Space Service space station. Extremely homesick, she is excited to learn she will be a guide to a woman from Earth visiting the station for a couple days. She is immediately drawn to the petite woman, seeing past her scars to her true inner beauty, stirring unforeseen desires.

Unfortunately, Jewel is there for a date which Flavia hasn’t been told about. Can she contain her lust and simply show her a good time? Or will she let her desire lead them into an unknown future?

I’m so glad that there are a slew of writers putting out f/f sci-fi/F. I don’t mind contemporaries, but I need to mix it up and there just aren’t that many sub-genres in lesbian romance that aren’t contemps.

Unknown Futures is a fairly short story but it did manage to offer a lot and be engaging. I got a good feel for both the main characters and it was fun to read.

The main appeal of this book is both women, their personalities and how their relationship develops. There’s not really a lot of angst or tension and despite some issues that would block their getting together, they get passed it fairly quickly.

Jewel has been scarred both physically and emotionally. The only person who she felt loved her and accepted her in her current disfigured condition was her mother who passed away. What I like about her is that while it’s clear she’s an outcast, being treated differently because of her scars, she doesn’t wallow in self-pity and she does have pride. She feels self-conscious but she get pissed at the thought that she’s been sent to the space station for a date because it's occupied with weird looking aliens who won’t object to her looks. So I liked that, she has some spunk and fight for herself.

Flavia is a strong, self-confident woman. While being only one of few humans on the space station, she’s very picky about any love interest. When she first sees Jewel she’s immediately attracted and excited. What I liked in her is that she doesn’t feel attracted out of feeling sorry for Jewel. Nor does she latch onto Jewel because she’s lonely for humans and her home. She really  finds Jewel beautiful and goes for it even though Jewel is shy at first.

The romance is nicely done, however, I think if this story were longer it could have been more developed and nuanced. It did feel a bit rushed. Also while there a few sex scenes I felt they were written in a rushed way as well. I don’t need long drawn out sex scenes but if the writer does put them in, it’s nice to feel that the characters are really into it and want to spend time exploring each other. Or maybe it was that heat between the characters was missing for me on that level.

What did come through though is that their heart/being attraction for each is strong and amazing and they click right away. It’s just a feel good story on that level. And of course there’s a satisfying happy ending.

On the sci-fi part of the story, well, it’s not long enough to really develop the world-building in a lot of detail, but what’s written is creative and gave a unique and interesting backdrop for the women to get together. There was one huge world-building plot hole, which you don’t get until the end, but after the fact I enjoyed this as a sweet love story and not so much for the sci-fi aspects.

Unknown Futures is a definite recommend. It’s an appealing and loving romantic love story.

Heat level: 3-4- sexual scenarios are sensual in language but not too graphically written.

Grade: Really liked

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