Alien Romance – Past Midnight Book Reviews & More

My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️

Title: The Wildborn (Starborn, #1)

Author: Perri Torani

Pages: 606

Format: ebook (kindle unlimited)

Publication Date: 6/28/26

Categories: Alien Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Series

To walk the path of a morazir, I will exist in three states of being:

Untouched.

Untaken.

Unconquered.

Airik, a battle-scarred warrior serving the cruel intergalactic empire of the Veynari, craves silence from the nightmares tormenting his mind. But while on post to decommission a failed experiment of a planet, a rogue human spacecraft crashes, and a reckless decision leaves him stranded—entangled with a woman he never should have saved.

Nora wakes light-years from Earth, broken in body and spirit, at the mercy of an alien soldier who refuses to let her die. Devastatingly beautiful, terrifyingly competent, and bound by a warrior’s oath that permits touch only to destroy, he’s the reluctant guardian angel she neither wants nor believes she deserves.

Trapped together, they’re forced to navigate a brutal landscape, vicious beasts, and the deadly remnants of an abandoned world. Duty demands Airik’s cold indifference. Yet Nora sparks something deliciously alive—and entirely forbidden—within him. What begins as necessity ignites a primal hunger: scorching, consuming, and impossible to resist.

But even if they survive, the Veynari—ever present and ruthless—won’t allow its warriors weakness like love. For Airik and Nora to be together, they must risk everything.

Content Warning: violence, death

+ I’m opening up to reading more Alien Romance and saw this as a popular one on Kindle Unlimited so I wanted to try it. Airik is a warrior for the Veynari but he’s also an outcast because of his parents’ love for each other – love is not something the Veynari do. So he’s this really tortured guy, trying to stay in his lane and do what he’s told until he ends up on another planet for a mission. He finds Nora, a human who has crash landed on this same planet. They are forced to be together and that’s how things grow between them.

+~ Nora and Airik are both broken people/species. They have trauma from their past and it was fitting that they met and fell in love. I thought it was fun to see how they learn how to communicate, it helps that Airik was already studying some English and learning about humans. He learns a lot more while around Nora and she learns about his species as well. I don’t think there is anything about Nora that stood out though, I was way more interested in Airik and his past. There is one secondary character in here that I was intrigued by and loved and that’s Torren, Airik’s best friend.

+~ I think I was going into this just thinking it was going to be a romp in space, a little smutty, but fun but I was wrong. There are a lot of tears shed between Nora and Airik, I actually wondered why they couldn’t stop crying, because it was a little too much for me. I didn’t expect this to be so emotional but I really felt for Airik. It’s a forbidden romance between two broken people who just want to be loved and belong somewhere. They want a future together but don’t know how to make that happen and by the end I was hoping they could be together someway, somehow. It’s an alien romance so the spice has some creative elements to it which makes it fun, but yeah, these two have a rough time of it trying to carve a path for a future together.

+~ I did enjoy the world building but I do think the length of this book was too long. Most of the time is spent on the planet with Nora and Airik spending time together, which is fine, and they get all their spicy scenes in, but I did wish some of it would have been cut out to make the story move faster. Pacing was an issue but there is a lot of action at the end though which I enjoyed.

Final Thoughts:

I thought this started off good, and I love when Nora and Airik meet and learn from one another, the spice was fun too but then the story got too long and started to drag a little before the action came in at the end to make things interesting again. So for an alien romance I thought this was not bad and I did find the world building really detailed. There was more emotion in this than I was expecting and I would like to read book two if it’s about Torren but I also hope it won’t be as long as this one but a tighter story.

Read if you like: