Grim, by M.K. Eidem

Grim is a paranormal romance involving aliens. Really big ones with muscles all over the place and, you know, big… bodyparts. It’s a lovestory between a human woman and a super intimidating alien, Grim – who of course is a big teddy bear at heart – in a kind of X-rated fairytale.

It’s about Lisa, a widowed mother of two, who gets abducted by aliens since the alien people – the Tornians – are on the verge of extinction due to lack of females. So yeah, human women are kidnapped to be used as breeding stock. Luckily, the Tornians are not only genetically compatible with humans, but they’re also very hunky. Colorful as well, but mainly they’re very, very well built. All over. Which is damn lucky. A lovestory between a human woman and a tiny little creature with a miniscule weiner would be a tough sell.

Anyway. Lisa gets abducted, along with her two daughters. Since women are so rare, Lisa and her children are considered to be extremely valuable. Too valuable, according to other Tornian lords, for the unworthy Grim to keep. There’s political intrigue, cultural clashes (alien society, duh), misunderstandings (humans vs aliens, duh), some more kidnapping attempts, inter-species shagging and love of course.

It was truly an interesting read, that’s for sure. I vacillated between being thoroughly entertained to irritation over the never ending grammatical errors and then I was back to being all engrossed in the story again. The entire thing has a sort of naive quality to it, in that it’s very simple and black and white. The bad guys are super bad, the good ones are so honorable that all they’re missing are halos. The plot is easy to deduce and there’s very little nuance in general. But still, it’s a long story with obvious effort put into it. Even if the character and plot development both are a bit crudely executed, I still wanted to finish the story. I had to see it through to the end. So despite the storytelling leaving a lot of room for improvement, the story in itself was entertaining as all hell.

But I really struggled with the read for a while. Eidem mixed past and present tense in a completely insufferable way. Even switching tense in the same sentence. And the point of view jumped back and forth between characters in a way that it was sometimes hard to tell who’s POV it was. It made reading both hard and irritating. I think that was the most off-putting about Grim. I would definitely read more of Eidem’s books if I only knew they had been proof-read first. Sad but true.