3.5 stars

Alonso and Marcella are actually good together and I enjoyed their platonic relationship. Marcella's grandmother is a handful too. Bobby and Grace, as secondary characters, are interesting in their own right, but we don't spend a lot of time with them. Most of the action is in the background, since this story is centered around the relationship that develops, perhaps just a tad too quickly, between Alonso and Marcella. This does not detract from the story.

We get the main story of the cause of Alonso's amnesia through a series of flashbacks and dreams as he starts to heal from the trauma of being someone's puppet for five years. Unfortunately, this part isn't as well developed as it could have been - it's almost like the author wasn't entirely sure where they were going until late in the book. A number of threads from this lack of development are left to dangle in the wind as a result.

Why, for instance, does Alonso, a tech nerd in life, have a reputation for being a good fighter as shown when he takes down a stalker early on in the story? We're not privy to that part of his history. Nor why the Master of Atlanta wanted to control Alonso in the first place. He accuses Alonso of stealing something of his, but again, we're never told just what Alonso stole.

I do think that S. Gate has promise as a writer, and some of the rougher edges of their storytelling will smooth out with time and more practice, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here. I did enjoy the story and the characters very much. In fact, I was really disappointed that the story ended when it did because I wanted more.

There should have been a trigger warning for mentions of past trauma and rape.
Did I mention the reprehensible Leah and Brendon? Alonso's wife, Leah, convinced Brendon to make Alonso into a vampire. Alonso, an asexual who is both repulsed by and uninterested in sex, finds memories surfacing of forced interactions with Leah, much to his horror. Since he was being kept under another's thumb, Leah was more than happy to take advantage of the situation.. ( )