I’m excited about writing this because none of y’all know me! These are the books I comfort reread with a disturbing regularity, and they are the sweetest, filthiest Why Choose/ABO romances out there. I just finished a buddy read with some romancelandia friends and I gotta share em with y’all as well. (Because I know none of you are my mother)
First – what is Why Choose and what is ABO? Why Choose is the new term for Reverse Harem, which in romance books involves one woman with several men. In this series, most everyone is at least a little bi and there’s no judgment. ABO is a shorthand for Alpha/Beta/Omega romance, also known as omegaverse. This came out of fanfic, and is generally an AU where people have biological designations similar to wolves with some interesting physiology and pheromones. It’s not shifters, just an entirely different sort of human. There are a lot of different types of ABO stories, many that are much much darker than my preferred flavor of smut. It’s a crazy rabbit-hole to fall down if you’re so inclined. (Still with me??)
Kathryn Moon’s Sweetverse is very very sweet. She’s an author I adore in general and these books are her best. Writing an RH series means each book has at least 5 MMCs, and she manages to make these men distinctive, their relationships with each other and the FMC unique. KM writes alternating chapters in from various character POVs and each manages to have its own voice. I read a lot of books along this vein, this is actually quite the achievement.
As sweet as the love stories are, the world is rough. There’s an overarching plot line of human trafficking. Lola’s books involve serious PTSD and trauma processing and extensive flashbacks (that are printed in italics for easy skipping if needed). My personal favorite in the series is Bad Alpha, mostly because of the detailed and exciting fight scenes (she’s a mercenary taking down the trafficking ring).
I would be remiss if I did not warn that these are incredibly explicit books. There’s a lot of people and they’re all driven by biological urges. The spicy scenes are ¡muy caliente! and not for the faint of heart.
But, as much as I appreciate the explicit, these really do have very sweet love stories at the center. The writing is excellent, KM doesn’t use the same turn of phrase over and over or any of the other petty things that tend to show up in these series. And while the life sounds exhausting more than anything else, I was fully in love with every character by the end of each book.
This is a wonderful escape series. There’s bad stuff that happens, but good people go out and fix it. It’s completely divorced from our reality and politics, so it’s easy to fall in to this world and block everything else out. And…it may lead to…hmmm….how to put it. Let’s say my husband appreciates it when I read this series, even if he doesn’t know it. I adore Kathryn Moon’s Sweetverse and I hope I convinced someone out there to pick it up.