What the Heck Happened to Kristen Ashley?

Against his will, Noctorno Hawthorne, an undercover vice cop, finds himself embroiled in magic, mayhem and parallel universes. Too late, he meets an amazing woman only to find she’s destined for his identical twin in another world.

And things aren’t going real great there.

Noc is recruited to help save that world.

What he doesn’t know is his destined love resides there.

Franka Drakkar wears a mask. A mask she never takes off to protect herself in a world of malice, intrigue and danger.

When Franka meets Noc and he discovers her secrets, convinced she carries a midnight soul, having shielded herself from forming bonds with anyone, she struggles with accepting his tenderness and care.

When Noc meets Franka, over wine and whiskey, her mask slips and Noc knows it’s her—only her—and he has to find a way to get her to come home with him.

Carolyn

Lori darlin' - I went to Amazon as I said I would and sure enough, this book has 4 1/2 stars! Folks, this is NOT a five star book. This is not a three star book nor a two star book. Actually, I guess it's a 0 star book because I DNF'd that sucker in Chapter 2, at Location 783, with 7% read. Perhaps I shouldn't be commenting on it since I read so little, but I was shocked, actually shocked at the writing.

KA has her own way of writing with her own quirks, etc. She'll never be a Loretta Chase or Linda Howard. But she knows (or knew) how to tell a story so I forgave the awkward writing.

Not this time.

Lori

Oh my God! I got 2 whole pages further than you before I DNF'd it.

Someone(s) actually read it to the end? I wonder if it's The Masochist's Book Club? Because nobody alive who actually likes well written books could read this piece of Motorcycle Man waste without wanting to flush (that was my clever way of calling it shit).

The last couple of KA books have been a disappointment but this was just unreadable.

Carolyn

It was unreadable. And even worse, it was boring. Perhaps it's just that we're aging? I don't have the patience to wade through reams of unnecessary verbiage or suffer through the awkward dialogue. I like the Colorado series, I like Motorcycle Man, there are several other books I enjoy. What the hell happened with this one? You're right, her last couple of books weren't up to her par. They all committed the sin of being boring.

But this one, this one is badly written with awkward sentences and incomplete thoughts. For example:  "I moved sedately to the morning room as the servant, who had also endured the attack that day, not to mention they had a house full of visitors to see to due to the cancelled Bitter Gates that was to happen that night, if the world had not been threatened." I had to read this several times to make sense of it. It didn't help that I remember nothing of the last book.

I also found this awkward:

"This made it safe for the most powerful men on those two continents to live out their days in harmony with the loves they'd found across universes.

Found them and impregnated them."

I promise, no more examples. Maybe it's just me and my aging brain ...

Lori

I think when reading KA  there's an agreement that what she considers alpha sometimes skids around the corner into silliness. Her men are big, bossy, intelligent men who manage to sound like a bunch of skinny, little six year olds trying to sound tough.

So here we have a man from this world who is in a Fantasy world of magic that seems very fairy princess-y with dragons and royalty and he's all "babe" and "sugar lips" and "want to play with my i-phone, little girl".

He called her sugar lips and this isn't a comedy. And the heroine who is supposedly cold as ice and regal as shit sits there and doesn't mind that this other world  dirt bag is talking to her in such a condescending and degrading manner.

Her last book was almost a DNF for me but I went back and finished it. Found it hard to read though. This one won't get that chance since I plan to delete it off my Kindle.

Carolyn, I hate to say but I think that KA will always be fondly remembered for Tack and her Colorado Men series (most of them were cracktastic at the time) but she's lost it now. Unreadable prose. Unlikable characters. Whatever she had is gone.

Carolyn

It pains me to agree with you. And a nonsensical aside - I find the name Nocturno ... less than appealing. He sounds like a musical score.

Anywhoo, I don't think Ms KA will see any more of my dollars. I expect authors to improve over time, not regress. It's very sad.

Reading and Reading and Reading

If you've read Carolyn's recent reviews then you know there's been some damned good books on our Kindle. And damn the woman, it's hard to say no when she's raving about titles.

RISE by Karina Bliss is really all that. I wasn't crazy about the first book and if this was a continuation then I wasn't crazy interested. But Carolyn told me to try and I did and wow, that's a damned good story.

One of the best things was that they were all adults. Acted like adults, fucked up like adults and again, acted like adults.

Radiance by Grace Draven. Holy everything that's good and sweet and wonderful. Here's a book that starts great and stays at that same level throughout. The characters understood what was happening to them and therefore didn't blame the other, they got to know each other (one human, one not) and went from friendship to love in a natural progression that was sweet.

Hated the end though and only because it was a cliffhanger.

Just Kids by Patti Smith. I'm an old Patti Smith fan and this is a book about her early life in New York with her lover/muse/best friend Robert Mapplethorpe. If you don't know Mapplethorpe, he was a highly talented, controversial photographer. I had some of his prints years back.

The book describes New York at a time when artists were searching for new expression, when there were patrons for art and well, a real bohemian kind of life. The personal story is a heartbreak: Smith and Mapplethorpe being best friends, lovers, friends again and ultimately each other's heartbreak.

Until the Sun Falls From the Sky and At Peace by Kristen Ashley. These are books 2 and 3 in the Bur series (I think). Until the Sun is a story with a widow and her security guard neighbor. He has a bad history, a mobster keeps killing the men in her life and of course, there's lots of sex and the woman is feisty.

In this one basically the hero tells the mother of 2 how to raise her children and she doesn't slam his head into the sidewalk but rather accepts that he's right and she's wrong. By the way, I would have shot him. (That's a KA thing in every book: the hero tells the heroine how to act and she always knows that he knows best.)(Barf)

At Peace just sucked. Start to finish, bad book.

Got a new Laura Florand, a new Sarah Addison Allen and a few more... might come out later once I get them read.

**Edited to add**

I WISH by Elizabeth Langston. It was a daily deal (I think) at DA and sounded good. Well, I just finished it in one sitting. Oh my, such a good book.

It's YA. A 17 year old girl whose life has fallen apart and she's barely keeping her family together. She gets a genie and her choices for wishes are unlike what anyone would expect.

It's an intriguing story and one that doesn't go where expected. So good. I'd highly recommend it.

Now I'm going to read Trouble in Texas. Hot cowboy on the cover. I am so all over that.

Sommersgate House by Kristen Ashley

 

 

Blurb:  Douglas Ashton is the cold and unfeeling owner of the gothic Victorian Mansion, Sommersgate House. Julia Fairfax is his stubborn American sister-in-law. After tragedy strikes, Douglas and Julia are forced to live together at Sommersgate and raise his newly orphaned nieces and nephew.

Douglas has no desire to raise his dead sister’s children nor does he want the distraction of the tempting Julia living under his roof. Julia is struggling with grief and trying to make a go in a new country without much help from impossibly handsome but even more impossibly remote Douglas. Not to mention, she has to deal with the active hostility of Douglas’s frosty, Attila-the-Hun-in-a-skirt mother, Monique.

Douglas decides the best way to give the children what they need, get his mother to behave and give himself what he wants is to marry Julia. When he tells her (yes, tells her) she will be his wife, Julia thinks Douglas is (probably) insane. And anyway, she’s decided if she ever has another husband (since the last one wasn’t so great), he was going to be short, balding, have a paunch and worship the ground she walks on (none of these characteristics define Douglas in the slightest).

One more thing, Sommersgate House is haunted by the ghosts of the man who built the house and the woman who was the love of his life. They both died mysteriously at Sommersgate months after it was finished. When they did, a curse settled on the house making it seem strangely alive. And the only way for the beautiful but frightening house to rid itself of this curse is for its owner to find true love.

 

 

This book was definitely a surprise. It was not the Kristen Ashley we've come to know and love and it was definitely not crackalichous. It's not a bad book; in fact it was better written than some of the Colorado and Rock Chick books I've read.

 

Most of her writing tics are gone: no repeating names ad nauseum, no 'then's' beginning three or four sentences in a row, and the result is a surprisingly well written book. The plot takes place in England and even the spelling is English, for example - colour, favourite.

 

There's a Gothic tone over it all and small mysteries and nice people. The plot is very simple: two people falling in love and overcoming some trivial problems during the process.

 

I liked the ghost angle, although they seemed to be very alert ghosts. It was a fun read albeit a little draggy in places.

 

The author bio with this book states Kristen Ashley lives in England, in the West Country, so that would be before she came back home and wrote the Rock Chicks?  Were her tics deliberate?

 

Don't know what I'm saying, it's 3:20 a.m. here and I think I'm finally ready for bed. Be so glad to hear from Ashley fans who have read these very different books..;

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