Well this is a first for me! Aliens? Sexy sci-fi? I can't believe I've read it but I did and I'm not mad about it! Forbidden Desire was HOT and I really loved the story! Niva and Graven's story was about healing and love and had a well-deserved HEA! I think I'm going to read the rest of the series as well!

Robin Lovett’s Planet of Desire series has been an *utter delight* from book one- the premise (THE PLANET POISONS THEM IF THEY DONT BANG?!?!) is wickedly good, the characters fascinating and entirely compelling, and Lovett’s writing is sublime. Forbidden Desire is a fantastic continuation of the first three books! It centers on Niva, who is essentially the Sex Goddess of the Fellamana people, and Graven, the love-starved & genetically modified son of Captain Dargule. There’s tropes galore— forced proximity/stranded in a cabin, star-crossed lovers, heroine “unlocks” hero & makes him feel (literally!) and virgin hero w/ an experienced heroine. I so enjoyed this book!! Particularly, I loved Niva😍 So here’s a little homage to the queen herself, Sex Goddess and Bequeather of Instant Orgasms, Niva of the Fellamana💙💦

Things to know about Niva:
💦yes you heard me right, she can make anyone *instantly orgasm* w/ just a thought😮
💦orgasms double as healing?!?! Like w/ one touch boom! Ur healed and also v satisfied🙏🏻
💦When her ppl are afraid of outsiders& try to keep Niva from healing someone (aka angstyboi virgin hero GRAVEN!!!) who really needs it, Niva sticks to her guns & helps (nudge nudge😏) someone in need at the potential cost to herself
💦Ummm... Niva has three clits..Nuff said🙏🏻
💦forget sex dungeons, Niva has a sex CABIN!!! And that baby is just fuuuuull of some pretty fun toys
💦Niva is the *most* patient & communicative partner!She knows Graven is a virgin (!!) and gives him the space to explore at his own pace— we love a giver💙

Forbidden Desire is just page after page of pure escapist deliciousness😍

It would be easy to describe these books as the kind of bonkers bananapants alien romance that you need more of in your life, and that's true, but this series is also so much more than that and it clicked into place for me after I read this one. The notion that sex (and ultimately love) can be cathartic and healing and help someone recover from trauma is one of the most beautiful themes in this book, and it all happens within the backdrop of a really fun world between two characters whose story I savored until the very last page. I love the way that Lovett flips so many traditional alien romance tropes on their head with this series, too. Come for the sexy erotic hijinks, stay for the growing romance between an alien sex goddess and a bioengineered super-soldier who can't feel a thing until he finds himself literally healed through the power of her love.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book was uncharted territory for me, as I had never read an alien erotica romance before. And I have to say I liked it more than I thought I would. Yes, there are lots of sexy times happening, but what I appreciated most about Niva and Graven's story are the themes surrounding sexuality, specifically Niva's society's openness when it comes to consent and women not being judged for being openly sexual. There is also the theme of how important touch and intimacy being an essential part of connection.

I had been in a bit of a reading slump (thanks coronavirus killing my mojo!) and in a strange sort of way of art imitating life this book healed me! Okay, that's a bit melodramatic but it was just the sort of read I needed to get my brain running again! Fun story, a bit over the top in all the right ways. I enjoyed it very much.

I really enjoyed this novel but then I'm deeply biased to Loveltts work.

On my Instagram page for the 13th July- under highlights- NEW releases. I have tagged author and Netgalley for the RELEASE.

Forbidden Desire by Robin Lovett presents the story of Niva and Graven. Niva is a sex goddess and Graven is an experiment gone wrong. Niva will try to fix whatever's wrong with Graven, while going against the wishes of her people.

This story was sweet. I loved the characters, and the plot, and everything. The only is that I didn't know it was the fourth book of Planet of Desire. I was a bit confused at first, but I got into the story so fast. Honestly, you should read it! It is funny, short, easy and sweet.

Bio-engineered ex-soldier Graven, hiding out and pretending to be aligned with the human rebels who've come to live on the Fellamana, is captivated by the new sex goddess Niva, chosen one of her people.

But a virgin who cannot feel physical touch and a human to boot would never be anything more than a patient for the healer, right?

For Niva, monogamy is against her very people's way of life, and humans are the way to temptation, or so her people think. But there's something about Graven's wounded aura that draws Niva in. She just wants to heal him and then go back to her work.

But magic vagina aside, Niva and Graven find they are perfectly suited in more ways than one. Both lonely in different ways, both carrying the weight of expectation and past harm.

A deliciously explored and fascinatingly created world. I love how Lovett plays with this subgenre, making it both intensely consensual while also amazing hot. Niva portrayal as a fat, beautiful goddess is satisfying to my heart and soul, and watching Graven give her pleasure and reveling in the giving was also wow. So good.

Love this series!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me flail wildly over this absolutely bananapants scifi erotica series before. It’s absolute bonkers sex planet shenanigans, and it’s hard for me to express how much I love the craziness. And if anything, this book takes the crazy to a whole new level. Niva’s an alien sex goddess with a magic pussy (complete with claws). Graven’s a virgin who literally cannot feel anything physically or emotionally but decides he loves giving oral sex. There’s a sex rock, not to mention like a dozen other pieces of sex furniture in a full-on sex cabin, plus some evil empire plot all tied up in a story that’s essentially about consent. This is the fourth in the series, though I think it could be read as a standalone as most of the backstory, such as it is, is explained in enough detail to make sense.

“Three days of sex with her… I don’t know how I’ll survive. I’m not sure I can do it. It’s going to be embarrassing as hell.
She’s a godsdamn sex goddess.
And I’m a fucking virgin.”


The Fellamana live on a planet that has a toxin that, basically, makes you feel excruciating pain and eventually kills you if you don’t have sex. Niva is a literal sex goddess. She has the power, called the Exstare, to heal illnesses, mental and physical, through sex, and while medical advances make her not as necessary as she once would have been, she’s still a figurehead to her people. It’s a dream job – she gets to have all the sex she wants with anyone she wants, and by doing so she’s helping her people! She’s only had the power for about a month, though, and her position is complicated by the fact that the only other person who developed that power, her cousin Koviye – and the hero of the previous book – defied the council’s orders and ran off with a human. Monogamy is viewed as “human brainwashing” by the polyamorous Fellamana. Because of that, Niva’s forbidden from having contact with humans, and well, I’m sure you can guess where this is going.

“But I’m supposed to heal you. That’s what I do. I’m nothing if…” I trail off, disbelieving what I was just about to say.
“That’s not true, and you know it,” he scolds. “You are worth the infinity of the universe whether you help someone else or not.”


Niva’s young, idealistic and super sweet. She can’t help but want to heal the obviously hurting human who keeps hanging around her office. Graven is the genetically modified son of the presumed dead villain of the last few books, Captain Dargule. As a teen, he was enhanced to be stronger and bigger, the ultimate solider of the Ten Systems, but as a result, he’s incapable of feeling anything, both emotionally and physically. Though he’s been hiding out with rest of the human rebels, he’s not actually an official part of the rebellion, as he escaped his father’s ship during the big battle mess of the last few books. He’s relieved to be out of his father’s clutches, but he doesn’t believe he deserves to have a place in the rebellion, and he can’t explain why he’s so drawn to Niva. In a fit of pique at the council’s high-handedness, Niva invites Graven along on a mini-vacation to her family cabin, determined to heal him. But the damage is greater than she expected, reinforcing all her doubts about her suitability for the position and the limits placed on her. Unlike the Fellamana, Graven’s interested in her for herself, not her powers, and is just as interested in what he can do for her as what she can do for him, if you get my meaning.

“You still don’t know what a hug feels like. I can’t live with myself if—”
“I’m fine. You’re magical. The end.”


This book is told from the dual first person POVs of Niva and Graven, which works pretty well, considering how much each is hiding from the other – for Niva, it’s the consequences of her associating with him, and for Graven, the fact that he’d be executed as a traitor if the rebellion found him out. In between all the sex (this is erotica, after all), I liked that this book explored more of the downsides of the Fellamana culture, in particular how they view with suspicion anything that deviates from their norms. There’s also quite a bit about family expectations. Graven’s burdened by who his father was, while Niva’s father, while obviously a better person by default, is one of the councilors seeking to curtail her freedoms. He’s motivated by love for her, though, and the close relationship between the two is a good counterpoint to the otherwise rather negative portrayal of the Fellamana. As for cons, while I initially found it endearing, I was a bit put off by how fixated Niva was on healing Graven, even against his insistence that it wasn’t necessary. It felt a bit ableist to me and didn’t quite sit right.

Overall, though, this is sexy bananapants escapist fun, and I can’t wait for the next one!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

So what do you get when you mix a beautiful, full figured, literal sexual goddess with a repressed and tortured virgin hero?
Oh yeah. You get a hotfire erotic romance, that's what. Now I came (heh) for that beautiful cover, but I stayed for the sweet, sweet, romance. Niva and Graven's connection is strong from the start, it builds in a believable manner with just enough angst to keep me turning pages into the night.

The Firsts are fuego, the worldbuilding is different and interesting, and while this works prefectly fine as a standalone, it is the fourth in the series.

Now, it's an erotic romance, so this 'verse very sexually-oriented (it's baked into the worldbuilding) and is very sex-positive. Polyamory is the name of the game on Niva's planet. Part of Niva's talents is healing the people of her planet through direct sexual contact and that is exactly how Graven comes to meet her, watching her with other people, so if that's not your jam, you may not enjoy this. In a traditional contemporary romance, I generally am not about that OW/OM contact, but in an erotic romance, as long as I know what I'm getting into, I can be more flexible about it. Also, the way Ms. Lovett wrote the scenes, they are focused solely on Graven and Niva, minimal and at the very beginning of the story, so I was ok with it.

Bottom line is I enjoyed myself and when I finished this ARC, I went back and purchased books 1-3 because that's how much I liked the storytelling. So if you're into SFR where the tropes are delicious, and there's no shame in that sex game, then this may be for you. I'm happy I read it.

**ARC provided by publisher via netgalley for review**

Engaging sci-fi story with tons of heat, a really interesting, layered storyline, and a big heart. All of the characters are top-notch and enjoyable to spend time with. Super vivid descriptions make for a rich setting that enhances the fantastical world. Recommended for everyone who likes outer space fantasies, sexy aliens, and magical powers with their steamy romance.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
My first taste of alien erotica & a new to me author. I wanted to widen my horizons with my reading and when I saw this ARC available to review I figured why not? I have not read the other books in the series but found this could be read as a standalone. Forbidden Desire was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't expecting a decent story arc (for a short erotica story) or good character moments but there was. I mean, don't get me wrong there are a lot of sexy times included too. It was pretty creative too (heroine has not 1, not 2, but 3 clitoris *ahem* I'm sure you can imagine the sexy fun times from that one description alone).
I really enjoyed the characters. They were fully developed and complete Hufflepuffs. I loved how kind and devoted Niva was and Graven was just a huge teddy bear. Seeing how their relationship blossoms through communication was refreshing to read. Their main goals are to love and support each other throughout the whole story, which was incredibly sweet.
This short story also touches upon the topics of consent and laws regarding people's say over their own bodies/person. Niva is the main driving point of these topics and the points she makes resonant with the reader. There is a reason for the topics to be brought up and they are actually used to help the characters find solutions to their problems. The conflict may have been easily resolved but it made sense in the realm the story was set in so it didn't bother me much.
I'm glad I gave this a try and look forward to reading the others in this series.

A curvy sex goddess with a healing v-jay and a virgin human that’s been modified and can’t feel physically or emotionally = my new favorite couple! This book was sweet, fun and so sexy. I loved it and couldn’t put it down. There’s so much drama and action and one steamy world where you need sex to survive!

Nevi is the physical embodiment of love and healing on her planet. She heals and maintains power through orgasms. She meets Graven, a human hiding on her planet. He has been modified until he feels nothing. She is compelled to heal him and he actually begins to feel for her.

But will they be able to overcome the challenges each face? Nevi is forbidden from being with humans. Graven is hiding from one evil father that helps runs the empire.

Niva has a magic gift, she is the holder of the Exstare. A rare and and strong power that gives the her ability to heal her people in time of need.

Graven shouldn't even be on the planet. He escaped the clutches of the dreaded and evil Ten Systems, a system strong enough to wipe out Niva's people. He should know, he was tested and made just for the purpose.

Graven can't keep away from Niva, she's the most beautiful woman he has ever clasped eyes on. Her curvy body, luscious lips and sexy aurora...if only he could experience all of these magical things for himself.

Forbidden Desire by Robin Lovett, is the fourth book in the 'Planet of Desire' erotic series and it wasn't actually that bad. There were some quite steamy scenes in this book and damn, I really enjoyed them. The characters were okay, they weren't anything special but I did love the relationship between Niva and Graven and the whole secrecy to them. With that being said, I did struggle to put it down, as I wanted to find out what would happen further in the plot and what would happen to both characters.

There were some scenes where I thought they were a bit far fetched, mostly with Graven, but all in all I did enjoy the book and wouldn't turn down anything else by this author in the future.

Many thanks for NetGalley for the early ARC in exchange for an honest review. Forbidden Desire will be out this coming Monday 13th July and will be available on Kindle and other e-book formats.

I know, you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but it was the blue-skinned, voluptuous alien that caught my attention . . . and the tease of a sex goddess and promise of sex powers in the cover blurb that pulled me in. Robin Lovett or her Planet of Desire series were completely new to me, but I am happy to say Forbidden Desire has made me a hardcore fan.

Niva is Fellamana, a voluptuous alien sex goddess who came into her Exstare power a month ago, an inheritance that goes back generations, granting her the ability to give orgasms with a touch of the skin, and to heal people with sex. She wears her arousal and emotions as an aura, colors glowing and flowing across her flesh, turning her blue at her most erotically alluring. Graven is a human super-soldier, test-tube bred and cruelly altered to be inhumanly strong, but at the cost of all physical feeling and emotions. The connection between them, coming from nothing more than a meeting of eyes, is immediate. Acting upon it is forbidden by her people, but it is a challenge and an attraction too strong to ignore.

This is a sex-positive, body-positive, female-led work of alien erotica. Niva’s sex goddess calling requires her to feed the pleasure of others, providing them with orgasms, while Graven is the first person to come along since her Exstare manifested who puts her orgasms first, worshipping her body and soul. It’s not bondage and domination, but a romantic, feminist sort of power-exchange with which I deeply identified. I’m hesitant about spoiling too much of the imaginative kink, but I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t mention the three hooded nulba above her sex, the gently grasping claws/teeth inside it, or the magical fluids that flow from her orgasm.

As amazing, detailed, imaginative, and exhilarating as all the sex is, there’s a plot behind it all, involving a forbidden romance, a political rebellion, and a spiritual conflict. The story takes a dark turn in the final chapters, forcing the lovers (and the world) to confront their feelings for one another, and it gets pretty intense before we find our happily-ever-after. There’s so much about Forbidden Desire to love, from the erotic sci-fi concept, to the romantic characters, to the relaxed sort of gender roles, to the gentle power exchange, and Niva is a character I will not soon forget.

Steamy. So good to have a full figured heroine and love interest. Niva and Graven are alien and human. Both are stuck in rigid regimes trying to find their own sense of freedom. They find love, healing and steamy sex. This is a one sitting read, that will leave you gasping.

You don't go into a Planet of Desire a.k.a. Sex Planet book without a general understanding of what's going to be in the plot yet I always find something new to like about every book in this series!

Here we have Niva, a bonafide sex goddess of the Fellamana race who can heal through sexual encounters. In fact, it's her calling, her duty to her people. The problem is that she meets Graven, a genetically modified human who can't feel touch and this bothers her. She feels it's her duty to heal him too. And then when her orgasms are able to regenerate the feeling in certain parts of his body, she is determined to bring him back to his whole self. This causes tension between her and her father and the ruling council who have already lost one of their special healers to a human.

Besides the abundant sex, starting with Niva involved in her 'work' with Graven as a voyeur and graduating to their own relationship, the story has themes of family, loyalty, and independence. Graven's situation is complicated by who his father is, and how he came to be on the planet. And Niva can't simply desert her people to be with Graven. Their happy ending is a satisfying solution that takes into account all the complications of a sex goddess and a super soldier deserving of their HEA. It's easily read as a standalone but all the rest of the series has been equally fun escapist reading and I recommend them as well.

Review will be posted at Amazon and BN during release week.

This is my first book by this author, as I couldn't pass up the sexy alien heroine on the cover, but it won't be my last! It was banana-pants crazy, scorchingly hot, and fun! I can't wait to read more!

Niva is a sex goddess of the Fellamana people, on a faraway planet. She has the Exstare power, which allows her to heal her people through sex, be it a physical or mental ailment or illness. Their planet has something in the air which causes extreme desire in everyone, and they have to "release" at least once a day, even if it's on their own. She loves her job, and helping her people, and she is happy to be of service. But, when she meets a human man she wants to help, she's told by the council that he is off-limits, and it makes her very unhappy. She can tell that he desperately needs her help, and she won't allow anyone to tell her she isn't free to share her love and healing as she sees fit. So, she plans to run away with him for a few days, to her family's vacation retreat, and fix him up where no one will be the wiser.

Graven is in hiding on this new planet. He's the son of the most terrible and evil man in the entire Ten Systems Empire, Captain Dargule. His father had his cronies do terrible experiments on Graven since age 15, to turn Graven into a super soldier. He's been genetically modified, and now he is huge, tough, and hard to kill, but he also can't FEEL anything. His skin's nerves are damaged and he can't feel at all. Also, most of his emotions are blocked up as well. He escaped his father's ship during the recent rebellion, and he's been keeping his true identity a secret, as he knows the rebels will assume he's a spy, and could try to imprison or kill him. The Fellamana society is voyeuristic, and every thing is made of glass so nothing can be hidden, so he's developed a fascination with watching Niva "work". But, when they finally meet, and she wants to heal him, he can't say no, though he doesn't think it'll actually work. He just wants her, so he goes along with it.

Graven and Niva had a strong connection from the start, and their exploits were incendiary! I loved watching them together, as they slowly figured out that their bond was about much more than just their physical connection. When Graven discovers that Niva could be in big trouble for being with him, he's very worried, and I liked how much he cared for her, even though he had no expectation that she could ever really do the same for him. Her people consider monogamy a dirty word, so coming to care for Graven, and realizing she doesn't want anyone else anymore, is shocking to her. It breaks her heart too, as she thinks she has no choice but to go back to her life the way it was before.

This book was escapist perfection, and I loved every minute of it! I can't wait to read the rest of the books in the series now! I loved the fact that the heroine was the alien, when it's usually the hero. I loved how the conflict with the council was ultimately handled. I loved how the hero was basically "brought to life again" by the heroine. I just loved everything about it! If you like alien sci-fi romance, I think you'll love this book too! I highly recommend it!!

Quite an interesting sci-fi romance. Good writing and a totally likable female lead. Good job and hope to read more by this talented author.

Heat Factor: She has three clitorises! Uh… three clitori!
Character Chemistry: Graven is awkward and thoughtful and it’s pretty cute.
Plot: “I will heal you with my magic vagina!” Literally, not figuratively.
Overall: I had some qualms.

Before you start waggling your eyebrows at me, my qualms were not about Niva’s erogenous zones. I knew that this was going to be a crazy sex book because the subtitle is LITERALLY “kidnapped by an alien sex goddess.” And there is a lot of sex! The atmosphere on the planet makes people so horny that if they don’t orgasm every day they go insane! Niva has magical powers where her orgasms literally heal people!

I was fine with all of those things. Alien smut is ridiculous and fun and this certainly leaned into the whole “let’s bang with our alien anatomy” thing. Plus, I appreciated that the heroine was the alien, rather than the much more common alien hero.

I could even get behind the development of the romance, even though it’s almost entirely based on a three day sex escape, mainly because Graven is so adorably bad at words but so clearly feels that Niva’s desire is the most important thing. Example: as a literal sex goddess, Niva can decide when to orgasm. Her clients (who come to her for healing) dictate when that orgasm will happen. Graven insists that she orgasms when she wants to be ready to orgasm. This obviously stems from human/alien cultural differences, but reclaiming that power over her own sexuality is eye-opening for Niva, such that I could buy her special connection with Graven.

So what are my qualms? I felt weird about the portrayal of monogamy vs polyamory, and even weirder about the way Graven’s disability was handled. Let’s break it down.

Polyamory
Ok, so Niva’s a member of an alien species that is 100% polyamorous. Reminder: the planet’s atmosphere is an aphrodisiac. When you dig down into it, what that actually seems to mean is that sex and love or family are somewhat separated from each other. People have casual sex all the time - in public, in groups, for healing purposes, on vacation, etc, etc, etc. There are sex competitions where you are judged on form and style and number of orgasms! Much less is said about what family groups look like. Niva does have a close and loving relationship with her father (NOT LIKE THAT), but we don’t get a lot of insight about what the rest of a family group might look like. Towards the end of the book, Niva states explicitly that she hadn’t had sex in conjunction with love in a long time, which is what makes her connection to Graven so special.

Why is this a problem? Well, remember, that Niva uses sex therapeutically to heal people. Furthermore, this is not a job that just anyone can do, but rather can only be performed by a select few who inherit the sex magic gene. She is currently the only member of her species with this power. So her job is literally having sex with people in order to help them, which she thinks is pretty darn awesome.

However, the Ruling Council has decreed that she cannot have sex with humans - and here’s where things get a little uncomfortable for me. Humans, we are told, are instinctively monogamous, and if she has sex with one, she will be “brainwashed” into wanting monogamy as well, and that would be devastating from a religious/cultural/medical perspective, given her special status. Obviously, she initially scoffs at this, and also obviously, she and Graven have a monogamous relationship at the end of the book.

I feel weird about the whole humans are instinctively monogamous thing. But I also feel weird about the way that, in some ways, the characters are able to separate sex and love, but when it comes to the One True Love, sex and love are inherently intertwined and cannot be separated. And in this case, it also means upheaval for Niva’s work and culture. So there’s a definite statement here about what True Love means, and it’s a very narrow monogamous one.

Disability
Graven was experimented on by the Evil Empire before he arrived in Niva’s planet. In attempts to make a super soldier, his nerves were damaged to such an extent that he cannot feel anything. Like, his skin no longer has sensory receptors. He also is emotionally repressed (because torture), which Niva can sense because she can see emotions as auras.

So Niva kidnaps him not just because he’s a hot hunk of man meat that she wants to bone, but because she wants to heal him, physically and emotionally.

Ok, Niva’s a magical healer who might actually have the ability to restore Graven’s destroyed nerve endings. However, when it turns out that her healing magic doesn’t actually work as intended, things started to get a little uncomfortable for me. Basically, Niva can only restore feeling to parts of Graven’s body that are physically inside her vagina when she has an orgasm. Once the obvious candidates are taken care of, Niva continues to attempt to heal Graven, even over his objections that it won’t work, that he’s not going to have foot sex with her, that having feeling in his hands is enough of a gift, etc. But she keeps pushing and trying because it’s just so sad to her that he can’t feel hugs. And of course, at the end, she is able to heal him with a combination of her magic orgasms and the power of love. Now that he’s whole, they can truly be together!

Before I proceed, let me state that I am not an expert on disability rights or disability theory. And Graven does have an extreme condition that does not exist in current reality, as far as I know. However. This narrative that true love can physically fix a person erases people who do live with a disability and who are able to find love and acceptance just as they are. Just because Graven has a made up condition that precludes human connection doesn’t mean that this type of narrative doesn’t do harm.



I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.

This review is also available at The Smut Report. (Mid July)