I enjoyed this and I’m looking forward to the next in the series. Professor Olivia Ando is asked by her friend and colleague to take an off-the-records looks at his girlfriend’s friend’s brainwaves. Something strange happened to Aerin while standing in a freezing lake in upstate New York. The result is that she’s always hungry and can hear people’s thoughts. Olivia doesn’t know that the person she’s agreed to see is her childhood best friend and first girlfriend until she’s standing on her doorstep.

There’s a great connection built between Aerin and Olivia that is wrapped up in love, betrayal, anger, fear and regret that spans their childhood era to the present. Some is told through flashback chapters and some in the dialogue of the present. There are a number of aspects to the story that I really hope get revisited in the sequel. Their devastating break-up and Olivia’s estrangement from her family is one of the major ones. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens around her brother especially.

In this first instalment Olivia is given a lot more information around who she is and her motivations than Aerin is. She’s had a tough time and has protected herself. She’s also a little quirky with her talking bird and basement lab. Aerin is a little more mysterious and much of the focus is on her alien possession but it would be interesting to know more about her time in dealing with Olivia’s religious-zealot-Japanese-Baptist-pastor father.

I’m a little skeptical about the alien aspect to the story but I’m hoping it will tie-in in a reasonably plausible way. Most of my enjoyment was in the reconnecting of Olivia and Aerin combined with the speculation around mind-reading.

Book received from Netgalley and Bold Strokes Books for an honest review.

Unfortunately, this read was a bit of a miss for me. Admittedly, I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, but I do enjoy the genre when the book is well written. This wasn't a bad book, but it left me scratching my head in a few places...

First off, the ending really bothered me. It felt a bit disjointed, and left me with more questions than answers. This is the first book in a series, and the conclusion does not wrap things up in a pretty bow. It ends on a cliffhanger, which is actually ok with me in cases where I know there's a book 2 coming, but this one just felt like there was no conclusion at all. It felt like something was missing. Just know going into this if you choose to read it that there's not a nicely wrapped up ending.

Unfortunately, both of the MCs had some issues also, and that left me bothered and a bit indifferent to this story. MC Aerin has a sort of sensory attack at the lake, and although she doesn't understand what's happening to her, she knows she's different somehow. She reaches out to her ex Olivia, who's now a doctor, for help. My first issue is that Olivia is awful to Aerin. I thought she would grow throughout the novel, but she was nasty through and through to the end. Aerin on the other hand, just never connected for me. As a reader, I felt like we didn't get to know her personality at all. It was hard to distinguish what was her real personality, and what was due to the attack. It left me not really caring what happened to her by the time this one ended.

All in all, I'm still interested enough to read the next book in the series to see what happens next, but I honestly struggled through this one. 3 stars.

**Many thanks to Bold Strokes for providing me with an ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.**

I received an ARC copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley and voluntarily leaving my review.


I love sci-fi not to say this isn't a good read it just I pefer to watch on screen then read it.

Aerin who on vacation is suddenly strike with a ominous vibration that leads her with strange ability and since she doesn't know what happening she turn to her ex slash childhood friend Olivia for help.

Even though they both have issues you can tell they still in love with each other.

This was a confusing read but the way I see it's about two woman who still care for each other it just happen to have aliens in the mix.

This book has Aliens, childhood friendship and love and a very weird premise but is actually in its core, a love story.
Aerin has changed somehow and to find out what happened to her, she visits her ex-girlfriend and former best friend Olivia. Even if u can wrap your head around all this weird storyline, the writing is very slow and characters unrelatable at large with a very unsatisfactory ending.
I wish i could have enjoyed it more.
My Rating : 2.5 /5

This romance is driven by the unordinary. Ex lovers seek to find the cure as one of them faces alien habitation. There a number of twists, turns and cliff hangers. The story may be a little slow and drawn out for some, others will appreciate the time the author takes to weave this tale.

This was at it's core a story of love. There was a lot of character building along the way. Throughout, the characters were navigating how to forgive each other and themselves for long past sins. The emotional ride you take with this book is like a slow burn.

Before I begin, let me just give y'all a little quote that I just sent Madame Jane: "for real though.  that was so fucking good.  lesbians and aliens??? that's my SHIT".  And it's true.  Write a book, add some aliens and some lesbians?  You have yourself an incredible narrative.  And this one is about as good as it gets--with a childhood backstory unfolded throughout the general narrative and a healthy smattering of critiquing religion, Esther does it again.  

Both Olivia and Aerin are such intriguing characters, from the trajectory of their lives, to how they feel about reconnecting, to how they deal about the situation which has been thrust upon them.  And of course, we can't forget about the incredible side characters such as Jody, Ben, and Stanton who are fleshed out through work and bar atmospheres and help kick Olivia and Aerin's butts into gear towards them finally admitting that they love each other!!  

However, I should warn you that the last ten pages will give you a heart attack.  I mean, there's so much that still needs to happen!  And then you read those ten pages and are brutally reminded that there's a sequel (yay!) that's going to come out in a year ( :( ).  But put on your seatbelt and strap in for the long haul, because this series is going to be worth it.

I'm a bit conflicted after reading this book...at first I thought it would be interesting in a good way and then as I started reading it became interesting in a slightly weird way...but then it just went all out weird! By that point I was too far in to not finish reading so I kept going only to reach an end that wasn't an end, and I will probably read the sequel just to satisfy my curiosity.

I don't know if this author accomplished what she set out to do but I just didn't really feel immersed in this story and as much as I love a good mystery, I also want to enjoy the story.

*3.3 stars

This was a different read. I enjoyed Esther’s debut book, but I have to admit I didn’t care for this one as much. It’s sort of one of those “what the heck did I just read?” kind of books. I like weird and I love sci-fi, this just was not what I was expecting.

The story is about Aerin, who has some kind of sensory attack while at a lake in upstate New York. She has no idea what happened to her but she knows she is now different. Aerin doesn’t want to risk going to a hospital so she seeks out a doctor/scientist for help. The problem is the doctor is Olivia, Aerin’s ex-girlfriend and childhood best friend. Can they keep the memories of the past at bay to find out what is wrong with Aerin?

For the most part this book is what I would consider sci-fi lite. It actually might not be a bad choice for someone who wants to stick their toe in sci-fi but is a little reluctant. However, that’s not to say that this book is not weird. And I did feel it became a little convoluted towards the end. It almost felt like Esther was trying to cram too much in and my head was spinning a bit. Which is odd considering this is a shorter book that could have been made longer and is the start to a series.

This leads me to a complaint, I hated how the book just ended. It didn’t even feel like a cliffhanger (although it is) but more like part of the book’s end is just missing. I hate when books end like that, drives me nuts. I did not realize when I grabbed this book that it was a series with no current ending. Knowing what I know now, half of me wonders if I would have still read this, but then the other half says hey its lesfic sci-fi, of course I still would have read it.

Besides the annoying ending my biggest issues were the characters. I really struggled. Aerin I thought was sort of okay. It was hard to connect to her because I could not tell if she was who she normally was or if she changed because of what happened to her in the lake. Is this her real personality? It made me feel disconnected to her so I felt a little indifferent instead. Olivia, on the other hand was awful in my opinion. She was just nasty to Aerin and was still nasty with only a few chapters left to go. There was no time for character redemption. She was stuck on something that happened when she was sixteen and put too much anger on another child, it just didn’t make sense. All of her feelings were not invalid, but they sure should not have taken a whole book to get over. Maybe her character will grow in the next book, but something big needs to change or I will never believe in a possible romantic connection between the two mains.

Even though this was a weird premise, it had potential. I’m just such a character driven reader that the characters messed up too much of the book for me. This is one of those books I can’t recommend, but I won’t say stay away either. With as much as I struggled with this, I will still probably read the next book since I want an ending. I’m hoping Esther can really turn things around in the next installment.

Before I gave my opinion, I wanna say I would have appreciated a warning about this book being a first chapter of a series, because if you are expecting a complete story, this is not it, as the book ends with no answers.

***I correct, on the publisher's page, it does indicate that it is a first part of a series The Portal Book 1.***

With this out of the way, the book suggests a more complex story, about alien worlds coming to planet earth, not completely explaining the reason why.

There are two main characters, Olivia and Aerin, who have a painful past in common, which includes the realization of their sexuality in a small town and in a very religious family environment. This past is explained through flash-backs throughout the book, interspersed with the story in the current time, which makes it difficult to understand and form the complete past event.

About my feelings after finishing this book, the main one is that I want to know how it continues, both the alien mystery part and the reconnection between the two protagonists.

This suggests that for me the book has not been bad and that I liked it a lot. But keep in mind that it is only the first chapter of a series.