BykeChic

BykeChic: A Lesbian Action Adventure Romance by L. Fergus

My rating: 1 of 5 star

I’m really not sure where to start with this one. Basically, I didn’t like it at all. This is my first book by the author so maybe I just don’t understand the quirk of her books, but I see that as a flaw in itself.

I HATED every character in this book. None of them were likable at all. It felt like none of them had and solid character foundation either. Their personalities would just be whatever suited the moment. There was so much back and forth from hating and angry to being in lust? I couldn’t get a read on any of them and the b-line straight to love was jarring. Every character seemed to go 0-60 at any moment with any emotion. And some of the characters were just flat out terrible people the entire way through.

I will completely admit too I struggled to even follow the story. It was already weak at best and felt a bit too much like a certain movie, but then everything suddenly gets turned upside down. This was also jarring because still, the characters were awful even after changing and the story just made little sense to me. It felt a lot like jumping into a story already in progress like there are things I needed to know when starting this but wasn’t introduced to me through the book. Even with the obvious characters meant to have everything explained to them, it was still confusing and honestly a little juvenile.

I had to force myself to finish this book. It was waaaay too long, too broad, and too hard to follow.

Full Review with Spoilers

It didn’t take me long to realize I was not going to like this book. The beginning of the book, basically a prologue, was already so hard to follow. We follow two characters during an unspecified war and there was so much military jargon I had no idea what was going on. I understand needing to have some because it was a war, but there was just too much. All I got from it was two women in a relationship died and a leather-clad, black-winged angel came to them.

Even when the actual story starts I’m not sure what’s going on at first. Immediately when the alien race shows up in main character Kita’s scrapyard I’m taken back. Two warring alien races that can disguise themselves as vehicles are on earth looking for something and Kita gets caught up in it. Hm…

Kita is immediately drawn to the one that can shift into a motorcycle, Velositi. Almost IMMEDIATELY Velositi is into Kita and I cannot fathom why. Kita is terrible. She has no good qualities that I could find. Like all of the characters of this book, she has no solid structure. She is constantly going from needing to be with Velositi to “I hate all of this. I’m leaving. Bye.” This feels like it happens CONSTANTLY. Anytime Kita doesn’t get her way she throws a tantrum. She literally has to be dragged around kicking and screaming when she overreacts about everything. She even tries to kill herself twice! There’s so much back and forth with her it gives you whiplash. And it isn’t just her. Nearly every character’s personality seems to shift to whatever suites the moment. No one feels solid at all. Velositi is the only character that stays fairly consistent, but it’s not a good thing at all. Velositi comes off as completely shallow. She repeatedly tells Kita that she needs to look pretty. That it means a lot to her that Kita looks good if they are to be seen together. She comes off so controlling that it’s hard to feel anything towards her but contempt. I was so flabbergasted that Kita would just go along with this, yet her attitude toward men was so hostile. She befriends Ryan over a mutual love of bikes and he seems like a fairly nice guy until he is given just a negative flaw: he assumes even though Kita is gay he has a shot with her. This is a terrible quality to give a character and it’s quickly pushed aside again. With all the tantrums and aggression towards everything else, you would have expected this to be something Kita want’s to distance from, but no. Instead, Ryan and Kita are now bros. Kimmy, the Empress of the United States, is not immune to the constant flip flop of personality. She incurs Kita’s wrath like everyone else when she says something Kita doesn’t like and they are hostile towards each other. Then out of nowhere, they start getting along and Kita realizes Kimmy is actually gay and helps her realize this too. Suddenly, they are in love. Again, whiplash. I can’t stress enough how I disliked EVERYONE in this book.

A little over halfway through this book the entire story shifts. Suddenly we learn that Kita is really a fallen angel who has just been a human with no memory of this so far. She is some sort of god over universes and can do pretty much anything. At this point, I have completely lost the story as new characters are introduced and several characters start going by two different names. Honestly, I could no longer follow this story. It was way too long and there was far too much actually going on it. This felt like several different stories mashed into one and nothing had any real context for me to actually understand what was going on. There was a lot of political drama, for an alternate universe that I had no real backstory to understand as well as a galactic battle with transforming robots and angels. Even once Kita is her true self I still don’t like her. She becomes just as vain as Velositi had been and her harem of other female angels is as odd as her distaste for men with no real reason.

By the time I finished this book I really had no idea what it was supposed to be about. It starts out as one thing and then shifts so drastically, picking up threads of story as it goes. I have to assume you need to read everything else the author has done to even get a sense of what is happening and have any idea how this world works. The end of the book seemed ominous and did not leave me with any sense of satisfaction other than the fact that I could put it away and not have to read anymore.