Review: My Orc Next Door by Veronika Kane

My Orc Next Door (Eastshore Isle #1)
written by Veronika Kane
narrated by Keara Ryan and Tristan Warden

My Rating: 3 stars

Genre: Fantasy Romance/ Monster Romance
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: m/f

Blurb:
I’m beginning to think he needs me as much as I need him….

Look, there are plenty of things I just learned about the gorgeous, seven-foot-tall perfect specimen of male living next door to me:

1. Karnak can scent everything about me, including those times I thought I was alone in my hot tub and I decided to experiment with different water jet settings.

2. He’s really good at finding lost kitties (not a euphemism).

3. In the four years I’ve lived next door to him, the orc has known—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that I’m his fated Mate. And apparently it’s killing him to stay away.

But our beach town of Eastshore is dying, and I’m the one tasked with saving it. No pressure, right? And the fourth thing I’ve just learned about Karnak is that despite being the world’s largest, greenest recluse, he’s also the only one who can help me save our cozy, tightknit community. Unfortunately, he has this silly idea he deserves to be alone. If I can’t convince him this town is perfect for him, then how can I prove I’m perfect for him, too?

My Review

I received a free audio copy from Tantor Audio and voluntarily reviewed it.

My Orc Next Door had a fun premise and I feel like a lot of the set-up and plotting was well done, but some things about this one just prevented me from enjoying it as much as I had hoped.

I liked the set up with this small coastal town and how the female main character Jess is trying to save Eastshore Isle by coming up with plans to rejuvenate it. Karnak the orc who lives next door knows she’s his mate, but he is a bit of a recluse as he doesn’t wants to scare them and think he’s a orc who is there to be feared. A lot of the book is about Jess is coming up with plans to save the town and falling for Karnak while she shows him that the people of Eastshore don’t fear him and he belongs here. And along the way the two of them fall in love. It felt all well plotted with the right beast at the right time, but to me it felt a bit too deliberative at times and a bit forced. I just didn’t really feel it.

I thought the characters were both interesting enough. I especially thought Karnak was interesting with him being an orc and trying to fit into human society. The part about his art was great and there was lots of interesting stuff there and with what happened to him when he came to the human world that we slowly learn more about, but I felt like it didn’t get fully explored. I also felt like he was almost too human and the book was trying to straddle this weird line with this being a monster romance, but also making Karnak seem civilized and able to control his instincts. And I wanted him to be more orc-ish. It also just felt off to me how he had to hide or control his true instincts, but that might be just hitting wrongly for me as I am autistic and had to mask a lot.

I liked Jess’ passion for saving her town and how much she loved this town and wanted to make sure there would not be a huge complex build, so she came up with another plan. The romance between the two was fun to see develop and I liked there is actually some time with them spending together before they fall in bed, but again I just didn’t really feel their connection as much as I had wnated.

I picked this up when I was looking for another steamy and sweet monster romance book like the Ashley Bennet series I read last year and this one seemed promising, but it didn’t have the same vibe. While My Orc Next Door definitely had that combination of sweet and steamy it just didn’t quite have the right vibe I was looking for. There are a lot of sex jokes and innuendos, some are decent and other times it just feels very overdone and too much. So it feels like there is a lot of hinting about sex, but there actually isn’t as much steamy content as I had expected. And the steamy content that is there just wasn’t very good in my opinion. The narrators both made the scenes sound awkward and they just weren’t very hot or unique. This feels like a pretty light monster romance with Karnak being mostly human with some different things that didn’t really change how the steamy scenes went.

Besides that there were all these smaller issues that just didn’t quite work for me. Like this conflict with another human who wants jess for himself and is being quite nasty about it all, it just felt very forced and then the way it got resolved felt more like a check to show how well Karnak could behave himself. Then there is the scene later on when Jess doubts Karnak without hearing his side of the story and the way that scene is written so he doesn’t actually tell his story until later in the scene. There also were the innuendos and jokes which could be kinda fun at times, but other times felt overdone and too much. I didn’t really like the fated mate thing. There also is some internal conflict that each of the characters deal with about whether the other really loves them for them, that takes a while to resolve and I felt like they didn’t really talk about these things once they got together and just had sex then instead of talking. There are also some places were the characters talk to the reader, which I didn’t like, but luckily that didn’t happen too often. So now I just wondered why those few instances were there as they felt unnecessary.

Both narrators were new to me ones and I liked listening to this book and they both did the various voices well and they felt like a good fit for the characters. My only complaint is that the sex scenes sounded stilted, but I am not sure if that’s because of the writing instead.

To summarize: I wanted a fun sweet and steamy book and picked this one up, sadly it didn’t quite hit the mark for me. There were just all these things that didn’t quite work for me. I liked the set and premise with the town needing saving and Jess’ plans and how Karnak slowly realized he does belong here. I didn’t really care about the whole fated mate thing and how the book felt a bit trope-y. Karnak was an interesting character and I thought his backstory was interesting, but it didn’t get as much attention as I would’ve liked. I wished he had been a bit more Orc-ish though, I didn’t really like how much of his orc nature he has to hide or control. The romance was sweet and steamy, but the vibes weren’t fully what i was looking for and I didn’t fully feel their connection although I did appreciate they spend time together before going to bed. And the steamy scenes felt quite normal for a monster romance book and they weren’t very good or unique scenes in my opinion, they felt a bit awkward and stilted. This one reads like a very light monster romance book, the setup was good, but this one didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

Links:
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You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.