HaBO: He’s a Spider Alien…Or Alien Spider

This HaBO was sent in by Nuria, who is looking for this alien romance:

I’m trying to find a human-alien romance I read a few years ago. It starts from the alien’s POV but eventually alternates with the female protagonist.

He’s a skilled hunter; she’s the only survivor of a crashed colony ship. Stuff I liked: where a lot of sci-fi romance tends to hand-wave the ‘sci,’ the world building and technology had a lot of thought put into them. The main characters acquire each other’s language slowly and realistically. The author doesn’t just chicken out by making the aliens basically humans but blue; the male protagonist’s biology – he has an exoskeleton and his culture is matriarchal; I wanna say it’s spider-ish? – is genuinely *alien,* but the sex scenes are still believable and pretty hot.

Other details…Ok the aliens are definitely based on spiders; the main character’s people live in underground tunnels, and when he goes off on his own (the queen wants to make him her consort and he’s not feeling it. She’s a villain & maybe killed his mother??) he makes a nest in the trees, suspended in webbing like an orb spider. He makes his lady a silk dress. There are a lot of genuinely funny moments, like since all the mammals on the protagonist’s planet are small, unintelligent prey animals, he initially assumes this grown-ass woman is basically a fussy, not-too-bright poodle and treats her accordingly. I chuckled. That said, even though there are laughs, there are some genuinely tense/sad moments as well. I wouldn’t characterize the overall tone as super dark or somber but the book is a little more serious than many alien romances I’ve seen here.

There’s a B plot with his little sister…? The planet itself is pretty lethal with loads of environmental hazards… there’s a 2nd book in the series but I DNFed it; it introduces a predictably xenophobic human rival to our protagonist, but the new guy is such a douche you never really buy it. I’d love any recs for more books in this genre too!

We can certainly run an alien romance Rec League in the future!