Toxic Love
By: Jax Garren
Publisher: SilkWords
Published: July 12, 2014
Genre: Choose Your Adventure/Dystopian Romance
Rating:
A mutation allows Chloe to breathe the poisoned air of post-atoxalyptic USA. GenFriends promises her a life of luxury and ease … as soon as she picks a man to start making babies with.
SilkWords LLC is the go-to source for interactive women’s fiction. Blurring the line between fiction and gaming, SilkWords.com offers high quality romance and erotica that allows individual readers to choose how stories proceed. Two formats are available: branched fiction (“pick your path”) and linear stories that are produced with reader participation. Future phases will focus on development of a SilkWords community by adding more levels of interactivity for both authors and readers. SilkWords is a place for smart, busy, adventurous women to unwind and have fun.
Toxic Love is an awesome “pick your path” novella. Although, I have to admit that I HATE novellas. I usually end up not connecting with the characters and finding very little world and character development. That was not the case with Toxic Love. I fell in love with the characters and really enjoyed being able to choose what decisions they made.
After Chloe’s daredevil stunt that lands her with a cracked mask, exposing her to the toxic air, she has some serious decisions to make. The fact that she didn’t keel over and die on the spot from her exposure means that she’s one of the very few people who are immune to the toxins the terrorists released on the US. Being immune means that she has an obligation to procreate little toxic-immune babies. However, because this is a choose-your-own-path book, we get to decide what Chloe does and does not do. I have to say though, my favorite storyline from Toxic Love was the first one I did.
The options the author gives are great and at no point did I feel like it was over the top. I’ve read one other adult novel where I got to choose what happens next and it was very disjointed and not easy to follow in your head. Toxic Love’s storyline flows seamlessly between your choices. Even when I chose a choice that seemed similar to the one chosen previously, the author added new information to make that story special. I really enjoyed this a lot. I hope Garren does more of these in the future.
I fell in love with the Jax’s writing with her Tales of the Underlight series. When I noticed that she wrote a “pick your path” story I knew I had to read it. There have been many times where I’ve read a story and thought to myself, “What were they thinking?! Stupidest decision ever.” I liked that I got to dictate the next move. There’s just something about getting to choose what course of action the character takes next that makes the store so much more enjoyable. You can’t help but get invested in the story because you put them in that situation.
“He wouldn’t take offense if she wanted to get this over with and go back to unpacking. How many times had he been planting seeds in his head while his body was, well, planting seeds?”
I don’t think I’ve read a pick your path type book yet, love the idea!
It was a lot of fun. You should definitely try one.
I have a love/hate thing with novellas. I like them for in between novels, especially late night, but like you hate that we lose depth. I will add this to my wishlist since Toxic Love delivered.
It’s available on NetGalley still. I was surprised when I saw it since it came out last year but I’m not complaining because I was really entertained by it.
Is this like Choose your Own Adventure? I remember reading those books when I was younger. It was frustrating but fun at the same time. That is so amazing that she did that with this!
PS You just gave me an idea for my FBF this week, thanks for the inspo!!
Yup. This is an adult version of Choose your Own Adventure. I wish more authors did it.
What’s your idea? LoL
Ugh, I hate novellas too but happy this one worked for you.
I’m really surprised that it did. There was more character development than I thought there would be. Plus, you got even more of a story as you chose different options going though.