This was sloppy. The author used a mix of first person and third person POV, while also having one of the characters address the reader as if she was telling a story. It felt so disjointed, unserious, and extremely rushed. This was also supposed to be a loose, twisted retelling of Beauty and the Beast but I fail to see the comparison no matter how hard I squint. Just because a story contains abduction and a giant in-home library does NOT mean it's similar to Beauty and the Beast. This was only 184 pages, but I had to force myself to continue past the first 30. The characters were also extremely flat. Asiya's only personality trait was that she was the most beautiful girl to ever exist and everyone wanted to either be her or be with her. And Lila's only personality trait was that her parents were dead. The author spent more time summarising a story than taking us on the journey. The concept of this book was intriguing and I would give it another chance if it was heavily edited and expanded to a full-length novel in order to give the author and reader space to actually experience a story.

Interesting. This was probably the best of the short stories to get me actually interested in reading the series, but there's more curiosity than anything else because there's no background information in this.

This is a very average 2.5. There was way too much not explained for there to be a healthy amount of curiosity. Quinn and Lexa are artificial and they're treated as if they're robots but they have human lungs, bones, brains and organs, plus they still need to eat so I'm confused exactly what makes them "artificial." It reads as if they're just genetically modified, lab-born children but they're talked about as if they're robots. Even the slurs and insults are robot-based. There was also a switch in POV in the epilogue to first person instead of the third person the rest of the book was written in and it was odd and an unnatural switch. This is a prequel short story, but it didn't leave me interested in the main series at all.