Kiss of Steel
Author: Cara Bristol
Reviewer: Sophia Rose
Rating: A
What I’m Talking About:
The planet Refuge and the Cosmic Mates program offer them a way to escape their pasts, but every day hiding secrets from each other becomes hardest of all. Cara Bristol writes engaging and exciting sci-fi romance and this latest Cosmic Mates caper featuring forced proximity, enemies to lovers is no exception.
Kiss of Steel is the third of the Cosmic Mates series and begins the second pair of duologies. This can be started without having read the first two as it begins a new series arc and new characters.
Opening with a perilous moment aboard a spaceship with Steel, a cyborg, getting lucky for the first time in his life and escaping the corporation that owned him and their attempt to snuff out his existence. Steel and another cyborg get the opportunity to restart their lives on a planet known as a Refuge. But, to get priority status for acceptance, he needs a wife. Cosmic Mates comes through. Now, what is he supposed to do with a wife when he barely knows how to be human?
Honoria was happily employed in a corporation until she learned what it really did. She turned state’s evidence on her boss and the corporation and is now a marked woman. She needs to get away- far away. If she must marry the cold, dead-eyed man who is the lesser of two evils (maybe), so be it.
Cara Bristol has written cyborg romances in the past that I thoroughly enjoyed, but just in case one wonders if lightning can strike three times in the same place, Kiss of Steel put it to rest. Like others in this series, the tone is more cozy than thrilling and these are quick-read stories, but there is so much background and development particularly as a disparate pair must figure out how to make their arranged matches work.
Steel and Honoria are no exception. The reader knows the secrets this pair are keeping from each other and is on pins and needles waiting for the fireworks when it all comes out. I really enjoyed how the pair went from despising each other with their first impressions to becoming true partners and then how they handled their secrets.
Kiss of Steel is a great kick off to the second duology, and now I can’t wait for Steel’s fellow fugitive cyborg friend, Fury, to get his story.
My Rating: A
Sophia Rose
About the Book:
Can she find refuge in the arms of a killer cyborg?
Bio-engineered to be an assassin, cyborg Jason Steel is targeted for destruction after he runs afoul of his creators. He escapes, and, passing himself off as human, seeks asylum on planet Refuge. Since couples are given priority, he applies for a wife through the Cosmic Mates interplanetary matchmaking program.
He loathes shackling himself to a wife just as he can taste freedom, so he intends to jettison the ball and chain as soon as he fulfills the contract requirements.
Honoria Foster is on the run from a hit man. After overhearing her boss plotting a murder, she testifies against him in court. But he’s acquitted, and now she’s in the crosshairs. In desperation, she submits an application to Cosmic Mates as a way to get off Earth. To her immense relief, she gets a match.
Her new husband isn’t the alien she expected, but a human—a cold, rude, rather scary man. But she finds solace in the fact that she’ll be safe at Haven Ranch on planet Refuge.
Mutual dislike puts their marriage on a rocky footing, but, as they’re forced to cooperate with one another to adapt to a new life on a strange planet, friendship and mutual respect begin to grow, and amity soon blooms into attraction, passion, and love. But Steel’s secret past remains a threat to their sanctuary and their marriage. Will Honoria still love him when she finds out the man she married is a cold-blooded killing machine?
* * * *
The Cosmic Mates sci-fi romances are being released in “duets,” a two-book series within a series. Books one and two are a set, books three and four are a different set, etc. Kiss of Steel (Cosmic Mates 3) is the start of a brand-new mini-series. All the Cosmic Mates sci-fi romances can be read as standalones.
Release Date: September 14, 2024
Publisher: Cara Bristol
Series: Cosmic Mates #3
Genre: Sci-Fi Romance
Format(s): paperback (230 pages), e-book
Book Source: Author
Purchase Info:
Amazon (affiliate link)