REVIEW: Built 4 It by Daisy Harris

Built 4 It by Daisy Harris
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The romance was nice but I wanted it to be longer. Because of the disturbing premise, it took me nearly half the of the story before I got comfortable and allowed myself to focus on the romance. Once I did, it was almost over.

+ the world building

The premise was a hurdle because it was about dead people being reanimated back to life as lab rats for experiments. Whether or not the steins, which the book called the zombies, became lab rats, they were quickly disposed of after a few months, treated fully like equipment. The story was not outright violent or anything like that, but it showed a side of human cruelty that I couldn’t fully stomach. I wasn’t surprised to learn later on from Shani’s POV, a minor character, that steins were also used for sex slavery.

While the world was easy to imagine, parts of it remained a mystery to me. For example, where did the bad guys get these dead people to make steins? What place did steins have in society? Were they openly oppressed or were they a secret of a hidden world? I didn’t read the prequels so I didn’t know. The book worked sufficiently as a standalone, but it was apparent to me the book was best read as a part of the series.

+ the characters

I didn’t have any delay connecting to the characters. The story was dominated by the couple’s POVs, and even though it was in 3rd person POV I felt no distance between the characters and myself. In other words, the character felt palpable, and their thoughts were like an open book to me.

Thus, I immediately felt sad for the couple because of what they were facing. Thankfully, it wasn’t all sad. I liked how Ben overcame the stereotype of a meek geek and summoned his courage to do what was right. I liked how Kee was a nice alpha who respected boundaries and put Ben’s happiness as a priority; I loved his attempts to reach out to Ben and be with Ben.

The characters were refreshing; they weren’t cardboard characters as I expected. I wouldn’t have minded if they were, but I’m glad they were not and that there was a perceptible standard the book was aiming for.

+ the romance

I also wouldn’t have minded if the romance had turned out to be nothing more than a fuckfest; smut fan in your presence. However, nothing like that happened. The romance turned out to be developmental and sweet. That said, I appreciated that there was still some smut. Incorrigible smut fan is incorrigible. Holla!

In Conclusion

I rate Built 4 It 2-stars for it was okay. By all rights, it would have been a star higher but the story left me wanting at the end. I wasn’t satisfied how the story came off more as an appetizer than as an entree. Not that the ending wasn’t a HEA — it was, but I felt like Ben and Kee have more adventures to be told, that this book was just the beginning. I wished Ben and Kee’s story continued on in a series of their own instead as a part of a typical romance series where each book focused on a different couple.

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