At the start of my ebook is a forward from the author, basically saying "wow I can't believe this series is 10 years old, and that I have so many books in this series and in spin-off series, I love my readers!" which I thought was cute, and it says 2021, so now 15 years!

And then there is a section of info/lore dump? It explains how there are these aliens who are looking for women / brides and there are three different species of aliens, and here are the rules surrounding how they can interact with human women... The descriptions of the species are basically: beast mode= werewolf-y, knot included (except for they call it a fist here?!); blood mode= vampire, with blood exchanges during sex; and twin mode, where there is a dark twin who is darker in coloring and more moody and light twin who is the sunshine of the pair, and they can read each other's minds and will always bond to one female so there is menage situation, but because they're twins there will never be any sword crossing (booo)... I have no idea if this information was always included right from the get-go, but here it seems to basically give the author a way to not have to do the work of any world building and setup? I don't know that I appreciate this inclusion, I think I would rather have some of this information more organically be presented within the narration of the text. But also it does seem that the author had a specific point in time where she wanted to start the story, and therefore the background of the setup was required for the reader to understand what was happening? Idk, odd start for me.

"Because that was a parent's job: to provide shoulders. Shoulders for your children to sit on when they're little so they can see the world, then stand on when they get older so they can reach the clouds, and sometimes lean against whenever they stumble and feel unsure."

Such a beautiful quote and thing to think about. Not every child unfortunatally will of had experienced the steady shoulders of their parents. But hopefully at some point in life, even if it's their teachers' or friends' shoulders