Scan barcode
t_white51's review against another edition
5.0
Bash and grace were hard to top
But Asher and Bex did! What a roller coaster ride their relationship put them through! Fell in love with Gabe also! This book is action packed in regards to emotions! A must read book and a must read series!
But Asher and Bex did! What a roller coaster ride their relationship put them through! Fell in love with Gabe also! This book is action packed in regards to emotions! A must read book and a must read series!
herefortheromance's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.0
gypsystar's review against another edition
1.0
Start a Fire was a really amazing story that I loved even though it wasn’t without its flaws. Through the Ashes shares these flaws and heaps a bunch of others on top. Bex & Asher’s story is a complete miss for me. Start a Fire was a 4.5 star read for me. I reread it in preparation for this one. I had high hopes for this book and the disappointment I feel that this one is so bad is heavy.
One thought kept returning to me over and over as I read this book. Julia Wolf’s internalized misogyny is showing. I could sense it lurking beneath the surface when I read Start a Fire but the author has dropped all pretenses here.
Bully romance is one of my favorite sub genres . I primarily read dark romance and enemies to lovers so these two partner beautifully in this genre. However, romancelandia is a vast place and there is an over abundance of these stories at our fingertips. Indie publishing allows the quality of these stories to wildly vary.
I liked Julia Wolf’s bully lite take on the genre in Start A Fire. I prefer obsession to malice. The best bully romances don’t get hung up on *the reason* for the bullying. This is important because *the reason* is absolute horse shit 99.99% of the time. When *the reason* is built on a mountain of garbage it really hurts the story immeasurably.
Julia Wolf places all her eggs in *the reason* basket and it dealt this book a fatal blow. She leans hard into *the reason* and if you see it for the bullshit it is, the story falls apart. Then she dug herself an even deeper grave.
So *the reason*? Bex’s brother murders Asher’s brother.
Too many bully romances reach for this tired plot device. The bully is wronged in some way by a person who IS NOT the h. Bully can’t personally punish the person actually responsible so they lash out and punish some INNOCENT person who is somehow related to or involved with the responsible person.
Anger and grief are excellent motivators for the reader to suspend their disbelief. All of us have probably lashed out at the wrong person in anger or grief at some point so it’s relatable. When an author lazily pulls out this plot device it has to be handled with care or the suspension of disbelief starts to take a major hit pretty quickly. Julia Wolf proudly whips this out and builds her whole story on this impossibly rocky foundation and when she finally makes her grand reveal we discover she’s built her already unstable foundation on quicksand comprised of internalized misogyny.
We don’t find out until 50% that it’s Asher’s brother that Bex’s brother killed. Asher & Parker hook up at a party he’s throwing FIVE days after the death of this brother that he’s so devastated by. The author gives a pathetic throwaway answer to why he was having a party only 5 days after his supposedly beloved brother that NO ONE knew about. The h accepts it immediately because we aren’t supposed to focus on how it’s complete bullshit and conflicts with the narrative she tried to build.
Asher mostly disguised his disdain for h in this hookup encounter. Bex is a virgin because, of course she is
One thought kept returning to me over and over as I read this book. Julia Wolf’s internalized misogyny is showing. I could sense it lurking beneath the surface when I read Start a Fire but the author has dropped all pretenses here.
Bully romance is one of my favorite sub genres . I primarily read dark romance and enemies to lovers so these two partner beautifully in this genre. However, romancelandia is a vast place and there is an over abundance of these stories at our fingertips. Indie publishing allows the quality of these stories to wildly vary.
I liked Julia Wolf’s bully lite take on the genre in Start A Fire. I prefer obsession to malice. The best bully romances don’t get hung up on *the reason* for the bullying. This is important because *the reason* is absolute horse shit 99.99% of the time. When *the reason* is built on a mountain of garbage it really hurts the story immeasurably.
Julia Wolf places all her eggs in *the reason* basket and it dealt this book a fatal blow. She leans hard into *the reason* and if you see it for the bullshit it is, the story falls apart. Then she dug herself an even deeper grave.
So *the reason*? Bex’s brother murders Asher’s brother.
Too many bully romances reach for this tired plot device. The bully is wronged in some way by a person who IS NOT the h. Bully can’t personally punish the person actually responsible so they lash out and punish some INNOCENT person who is somehow related to or involved with the responsible person.
Anger and grief are excellent motivators for the reader to suspend their disbelief. All of us have probably lashed out at the wrong person in anger or grief at some point so it’s relatable. When an author lazily pulls out this plot device it has to be handled with care or the suspension of disbelief starts to take a major hit pretty quickly. Julia Wolf proudly whips this out and builds her whole story on this impossibly rocky foundation and when she finally makes her grand reveal we discover she’s built her already unstable foundation on quicksand comprised of internalized misogyny.
We don’t find out until 50% that it’s Asher’s brother that Bex’s brother killed. Asher & Parker hook up at a party he’s throwing FIVE days after the death of this brother that he’s so devastated by. The author gives a pathetic throwaway answer to why he was having a party only 5 days after his supposedly beloved brother that NO ONE knew about. The h accepts it immediately because we aren’t supposed to focus on how it’s complete bullshit and conflicts with the narrative she tried to build.
Asher mostly disguised his disdain for h in this hookup encounter. Bex is a virgin because, of course she is
powerlibrarian's review against another edition
5.0
This is the second book in the Savage Crew series. While I read the first one back when it came out, I didn’t have a hard time slipping back into this world. Colour me surprised to find out that Bex and Gabe aren’t the couple in this book! “Through the Ashes” features Bex pairing up with Asher, who we (apparently) briefly met in the previous book, though I don’t quite remember him. He’s a golden boy football player who’s in the top 10% of his class, but he has a darkness inside him. I loved peeling back his layers and finding out who he is. Bex is just as lovable as she was in the first book--sarcastic, but kind, and an adorable little goth. I can just picture the two of them--seemingly polar opposites on the outside, but they have a lot in common. Their romance was just as good as the romance between Grace and Bash in the first book!
There are a few twists in the story, and while they were kind of predictable, I love the places that the author took this story. It’s a lot more than a simple, two-dimensional dark high school bully romance.
5 stars!
There are a few twists in the story, and while they were kind of predictable, I love the places that the author took this story. It’s a lot more than a simple, two-dimensional dark high school bully romance.
5 stars!
drk_psychprof's review against another edition
3.0
Asher and Bex
In my review of the first book, I said that I wasn’t a fan of only one point of view. I was happy to see this book had multiple POVs.
But, this story really bothered me, and there might be spoilers in this.
While you don’t know exactly why Asher wants to ruin Bex, you do get some inkling early on. You just don’t know “who.” So, they fall in love anyway. Yay. But then, Bex visits her brother and Asher completely loses his mind. Seriously? He is still her family.
Sorry, but I have a problem with this. Yeah, she lied to him, but she lied because she knew he’d get pissed and that shouldn’t have even been a thing.
Her brother did something bad, but at the end of the day, he was still her brother, and it’s not clear that she was set on not having a relationship with him.
In my review of the first book, I said that I wasn’t a fan of only one point of view. I was happy to see this book had multiple POVs.
But, this story really bothered me, and there might be spoilers in this.
While you don’t know exactly why Asher wants to ruin Bex, you do get some inkling early on. You just don’t know “who.” So, they fall in love anyway. Yay. But then, Bex visits her brother and Asher completely loses his mind. Seriously? He is still her family.
Sorry, but I have a problem with this. Yeah, she lied to him, but she lied because she knew he’d get pissed and that shouldn’t have even been a thing.
Her brother did something bad, but at the end of the day, he was still her brother, and it’s not clear that she was set on not having a relationship with him.
aneiracrossland's review against another edition
3.0
Just scraped 3 stars. I really didn’t get this book. The beginning was good, I was interested at the start. But it was not a bullying romance, he didn’t bully her nastily he literally did it to get her attention like sorry him putting a banana in her locker so she’d eat isn’t what I’d class as bullying.
I didn’t like how easily she gave into him like girl he has literally said he hates you and is a morally grey character and yet you’ll let him do the things he does to you? No.
The first 3/4 of the book was manageable but it was so boring after they ended up with each other, there was no drama or anything the plot was scarce apart from the brother situation. But overall I wasn’t hooked and kind of wanted to get the book over with.
I didn’t like how easily she gave into him like girl he has literally said he hates you and is a morally grey character and yet you’ll let him do the things he does to you? No.
The first 3/4 of the book was manageable but it was so boring after they ended up with each other, there was no drama or anything the plot was scarce apart from the brother situation. But overall I wasn’t hooked and kind of wanted to get the book over with.
missdevo's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
4.5
Bex and Asher’s story is intense and complicated. HS Bully romance with another level of emotional angst thrown in.