REVIEW: I Think I’m In Love With An Alien by Ann Aguirre

KaetrinB Reviews / Book Reviewsaliens / NetGalley / PNR / SFF1 Comments

Dear Ann Aguirre,

First off, isn’t that cover great? It calls to mind 1950s sci-fi movies and I love that the alien is both not a little green man with a giant head and also feels quite close to the book’s description of Seeker. I mean, if you go for dragon men – hot, right?

I really enjoyed Strange Love a while back (gosh, has it really been five years?) so this one was immediately on my radar when I saw the author posting about it on Bluesky. I should add that I Think I’m in Love with an Alien is not (at least not overtly) set in the same universe as Strange Love and as far as I know the books are unrelated. 

Jennette Hammond teaches astronomy at a community college in Oregon and has a passionate interest in extraterrestrial life, science, the stars and science fiction. She was active on a forum called “Aliens Among Us” and from there a sub group of six formed a private chat group. Jen is “Jeneticist” in the group. Other members include Stargazer, FarFromHome, Squidhead, JazzyPlum and Seeker.  Jen felt a special connection to Seeker in particular and they started messaging outside of the group after Jen reached out to Seeker when he expressed being lonely and she was concerned about him. They’ve been low-key flirting for months. More recently, not so low-key.

Interspersed among the chapters are excerpts from the group chats and private messages, which helps the reader get to know the group better and see the gradual build of the attraction between Seeker and Jen.

The group will meet in person at last, at Space Con at Rellows, Utah, a tiny town whose population explodes with cosplayers and SFF lovers every year. 

Seeker is, in reality,  Tamzir Jaarn, an alien from another planet. He was doing some extreme tourism and ended up stranded on Earth. His tour company didn’t collect him at the appointed date and time and his emergency beacon eventually died. He’s desperate to return home to his family, knowing they’re worried about him. He has no way to contact anyone and has been terribly lonely, living a very solitary life apart from online interactions with the chat group from Aliens Among Us. Particularly valued are his private messages with Jen. Seeker has a plan to attend Space Con for a couple of days, finally meet Jen in the flesh and then see if he can steal some tech from billionaire space guy “Owen Lusk” (this is a bad idea on a number of levels, most especially that Lusk’s spaceships keep blowing up. Sound familiar?) who has a scheduled launch nearby (ish) during the con.

Seeker has camouflage technology that he wears when he’s in public. How he appears varies from person to person (something to do with their brain waves) and even from occasion to occasion. He has been able to use his tech skills to create a US ID but it would not withstand the scrutiny of the TSA or ICE so he’s forced to travel, carefully, by bus or train. He doesn’t show up in photographs – it’s just a blur – so he tries to avoid cameras. If someone touches him, they experience cognitive dissonance because how he appears to them is not what they feel (for one thing, he has seven digits on his “upper extensors” – aka hands). 

I don’t want to give too much away about the other members of the chat group but I can confirm they all look out for one another’s best interests over the course of the book and they have a strong friendship bond.

After a short while at Space Con, Seeker realises that his plan to try and steal some usable tech from Lusk is destined for failure. He’s not really a thief anyway and the security around the launch is far more than anything he’s dealt with on earth previously. Seeker also finds that in-person-Jen is even better than online-Jen and within days he decides to confess to her who he really is.  From there, their relationship grows by leaps and bounds and soon they are contemplating moving in together after Space Con. (If Seeker is still on Earth that is.)

There are POV sections from both main characters and Seeker has a distinctly different narrative style to Jen, which I found delightful.

I’m always nervous when entering a new environment.

Will technology keep me safe?

And where is the nearest exist if it malfunctions? Pausing, I memorize the escape route before I move away from the front of the diner. The other humans have shared identifying markers about themselves in the communication hub, and I recognize SquidHead first, exceptionally tall and entirely lacking in cranial fur. He lifts an appendage tentatively as I thread my way toward them.

I enjoyed the nod to romance tropes in the book too.

Jen’s motel room only has one bed.

In the last month, I have consumed much local entertainment, and I’m familiar with this romantic device. The protagonists are forced, due to necessity, to share the bed, and erotic contact follows.

Jen is gray ace and rarely feels sexual attraction. But how she feels about Seeker is something else (I’m avoiding the obvious pun here. I deserve a medal). Seeker’s own attraction is not about Jen’s physical attributes, although he doesn’t find them unappealing. It’s more about who she is. He tries to hold himself back a little bit because if he lets himself he will bond with her and that bond is for life. Seeker’s people often have polyamorous relationships, believing that no-one partner can be everything to another, but each bond is very significant. Seeker doesn’t know if he even will be able to go home but if he had the chance, would he leave? If he bonded with Jen, could he?  Jen is also wondering something similar. Is Seeker with her because he’s stuck on Earth and would he choose to leave if he could? 

There are some threats from intrepid alien hunters at Space Con the group has to navigate as well as the ongoing reality that Seeker cannot really live a human life. He can survive on Earth and, yes, Jen makes an effort to find things that Seeker will be able to eat and actually enjoy beyond the soy-based protein powder he’s been subsisting on for the past year, but he will forever have to hide who he is and that is obviously a challenge to their ongoing happiness. Jen’s mother and sister are also barriers. Jen has a fraught relationship with them anyway and she knows they could never accept Seeker for who he really is. Seeker feels bad about being a potential source of conflict between Jen and her family, particularly because family means so much to him. If his true identity were discovered it would be disastrous for him so a life with him will be necessarily isolating. As it turns out, Jen has few friends and they are mostly the ones in the chat group. She has never really felt like she fit in – with her peers or with her family – so choosing Seeker isn’t as hard for her as it maybe would be for someone else. Seeker felt like he didn’t fit in with his family either. It’s a large part of why he travelled to Earth in the first place. His people value art and creativity – music, sculpture, etc. Seeker’s skills are more in the tech design area – something considered meritless on his home planet. Ultimately, Jen and Seeker are two misfits who fit with each other.

But what would happen if Seeker had the chance to go home?  Where would Jen be then? 

There are some intimate scenes but there is also a fair bit of hand waving as to the mechanics of intimacy with Seeker. I admit I was curious but I think the story was probably better with less detail rather than more. That way people can imagine what works for them. It helps that Jen’s desire for physical intimacy isn’t based on penis-in-vagina sex and that, in addition to being gray ace, she’s bi/pansexual. So she’s open to various forms of intimacy with the right person. Seeker feels similarly. 

I thought the end of the book was a little rushed and some of the threads didn’t quite come together all that well. I did still have some questions about how things would go in the long term but, having accepted the premise of the book, I was happy to go along for the ride. 

I enjoyed the humour of the book as well, like this, when Jen was telling Seeker about the breakdown of a prior relationship:

Jeneticist: I don’t want to dump on you…but you did ask. Things had been cooling off for a while.

Seeker: Temperature impacts the bond strength?

Plus, there’s a rooster named Kevin. KEVIN.

Grade: B

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