Scan barcode
trudyd's review
4.0
Great romance and important lessons. Hardcore thinks he deserves nothing after what he did in the past. He spends his days trying to redeem himself. He and his club protect those that can't protect themselves. He and his club get redemption for those that have been wronged. He still doesn't think he deserved happiness or love.
He watches over Hellen making sure Nails doesn't dig her nails into her. His watch becomes confrontation when Hellen and her girls go for their own redemption.
Smoke and Steel is a love story that almost wasn't. Smoke and Steel is a story about forgiveness, for others actions and forgiveness for one's own actions. The story hooked me with the wonderful characters. It grabbed hold of me with the dance of romance between Hellen and Core.
He watches over Hellen making sure Nails doesn't dig her nails into her. His watch becomes confrontation when Hellen and her girls go for their own redemption.
Smoke and Steel is a love story that almost wasn't. Smoke and Steel is a story about forgiveness, for others actions and forgiveness for one's own actions. The story hooked me with the wonderful characters. It grabbed hold of me with the dance of romance between Hellen and Core.
frenchpressbookworm's review
4.0
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Every once in a while I take a break from KA and then I’ll pick up one I haven’t read yet and I’m reminded why I enjoy her books. It’s almost like getting coffee with an old friend. And smoke and steel felt just like that. I enjoyed Core. Him and his brothers are just trying to make right a mistake and it was neat to see how they were doing it. Core was still very typical KA alpha but I also felt like he admitted why he went all alpha hole Often. He didn’t just down play it. He owned that he was afraid and that’s how he reacted. But Hellen gave and as good as she got. I loved how head strong Hellen was and how she was willing to stand up to him and not back down. Over all I enjoyed it. I look forward to more redemption story’s and old friends
Every once in a while I take a break from KA and then I’ll pick up one I haven’t read yet and I’m reminded why I enjoy her books. It’s almost like getting coffee with an old friend. And smoke and steel felt just like that. I enjoyed Core. Him and his brothers are just trying to make right a mistake and it was neat to see how they were doing it. Core was still very typical KA alpha but I also felt like he admitted why he went all alpha hole Often. He didn’t just down play it. He owned that he was afraid and that’s how he reacted. But Hellen gave and as good as she got. I loved how head strong Hellen was and how she was willing to stand up to him and not back down. Over all I enjoyed it. I look forward to more redemption story’s and old friends
ceta_cea's review
4.0
I really liked this book. I honestly believe it is possible for every person to change himself/herself if they put effort in it and are willing to go the length it takes. Is Core's past horrible? Yes, did he and the club sink to the lowest of lowes? Yes again... but I do believe they saw what they did, hated it and took great effort to get themselves out of it. This does not mean I would forgive every guy who is physically abusive. Not even close....but I know how ones past can fuck with ones action and I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt if I see someone willing to admit the shit they have done and are willing to do better. And that's what I got from Core and from the club. And that is why I understand Hellen's decisition. Plus actions speak louder than words. He treated her with respect the whole time, minues that he didn't share his past. But I truly believe he realized that how shitty it was not to tell her.
romancebookloverinseattle's review
3.0
This, like all books from Kristen Ashley, is very well written. I definitely enjoyed the story and sailed through it. But I also had some issues with it. Hellen is in her early 20s, but she and her friends behave and think more like women in their late 20s or early 30s. Core was great and I loved how he was with Hellen and how he card for her, but I felt like we often got misleading information between what he was thinking in is POV and what we saw in action. I would much prefer NOT to have his POV if it's going to be disconnected from his actions. There are two huge places with this, first early on when he thinks to himself that he is all in, but then clearly is not and then later when he thinks through having to really explain the past actions to Hellen and yet when faced with the situation just doesn't. These things really had an impact for me on my enjoyment for the story overall. I also am not a fan of the big angsty issues coming from a misunderstanding.
romancejunkie1025's review
5.0
Wow that one was a seriously painfully emotional read but I loved every moment. Core was sinfully sexy and the woman that stole his heart was sassy and sweet. Cant wait for the next one
anasatticbookblog's review
4.0
Smoke and Steel by Kristen Ashley
I was provided an advanced reader's copy from Kristen Ashley's publicist in exchange for an unbiased review. This post contains affiliate links. My reviews are NEVER influenced by ads or links.
4.25 Stars
affiliate links
I got a very early copy of Smoke & Steel by Kristen Ashley and had time to read it twice. I needed that because a lot was happening and I wanted to make sure I soaked it all in. In preparation for this read, I re-read Still Standing, the first in the series, but they are not really relevant to each other except the character "Nails". What I should have re-read was Rough Ride, Free and Wild Wind. I also re-read all of my reviews to refresh my memories (that’s actually why I retell the beginning of the story in my reviews, it’s to jog my own memory.) You can see them all in my Complete Guide to Kristen Ashley.
In the prologue, Kristen lets you know that Smoke & Steel is not really for newbies:
“Interspersed in this series will be a lot of lore that refers back to the stories of Tack and Tyra (Motorcycle Man), Tabby and Shy (Own the Wind), Hop and Lanie (Fire Inside), Joker and Carissa (Ride Steady), Millie and High (Walk Through Fire), Hound and Keely (Wild Like the Wind), Rush and Rebel (Free), Snapper and Rosalie (Rough Ride), Dutch and Georgie (Wild Fire) and Jagger and Archie (Wild Wind).”
Smoke and Steel is about the Resurrection MC. They used to be called Bounty, but after they did something so heinous they couldn’t forgive themselves, they disbanded. A group of the ex-Bounty members decided to resurrect themselves anew as a vigilante MC to try to make up for past sins, hence the name Resurrection.
“You could wallow in the hurts done to you and use them as an excuse to live your life hurting other people. Or you could fight the cycle and find ways to do better.”
Hellen, Jagger’s (Wild Wind) sister-in-law is smart and driven, running her own social media company. She broke up with her boyfriend because he didn’t respect her enough, and I loved her sass. (And OMG, her break-up speech was so spot-on and EPIC.) She has a cousin, “Nails” who is trouble, and Nails is headed to Denver. Resurrection is assigned to watch Hellen to see if Nails contacts her. And Core, Resurrection’s VP likes what he sees while watching her.
“I’d been stricken by that look on Core’s face because no one had ever looked at me like that. Stricken and moved. Something velvet glided through me as we locked eyes, and it was a feeling I’d never felt in my entire life.”
Core can’t forgive himself for the part he played in Rosalie’s beating (See Rough Ride and Free) He doesn’t think he deserves Hellen, but he doesn’t want to lose her and continually holds back such an important part of who he is. I loved how Beck stepped in to offer advice. In the end I really loved how healthy and HOT Core & Hellen turned out to be.
“Woman, I’ll trip on your shoes every fucking day of my life, if it means you’re in my life.”
The best part of Smoke & Steel is the family and brotherhood aspect. Though it sometimes felt a little corny to have men open up to each other so much, it shows the importance of family whether you are born into it or it's found along the way. The Resurrection bikers have been to hell and fought their way back together, and I loved the redemption in the story.
Likes:
- •I loved Hellen’s character. She’s smart, independent and sassy.
- •The whole side story involving Bree’s “Tinder Swindler”.
- •Being back in Denver and especially visiting Fortnum’s and Tex.
- •The meshing of her girl posse and the biker chick posse.
- •The way Core respected Hellen's career and drive.
- •Beck’s guidance for Core.
- •Seeing how the group paid for past sins and changed their lives.
- •There is nothing like a KA read to suck you in!
Dislikes:
- •Rough Ride (Rosalie’s story) and Free both play heavily into this story, and they were released 4 & 5 years ago. I don’t remember yesterday, let alone details of a story I read 5 years ago.
- •The guys aren’t the most realistic characters: They talk through their personal problems!
- •I think her worlds are getting a little too big with too many crossovers. Though I love finding Easter eggs, her books are getting harder and harder to keep track of all of the characters & crossovers.
The Down & Dirty:
Smoke & Steel by Kristen Ashley kind of brings all of her MC books together. There is a lot of history as well as a few crossovers from other books. I absolutely loved Core & Hellen’s romance, but I think to really get the most out of this book, you need to refresh your memory of all of her MC books, especially Rough Ride and Free. As long as you do that, I think you’ll enjoy Smoke & Steel as much as I did. I love being back in Kristen's MC world and Kristen's redemption of Core was done beautifully.
Rating: 4.25 Stars, 4.5 Heat
Purchase Smoke & Steel by Kristen Ashley
I highly recommend you read the Chaos Series before The Wild West MC Series.
stumpfed's review
5.0
Seriously. Every KA book is a guilty pleasure life lesson and it makes me wanna be a bad ass better human. The paradoxes involved in this level of writing also involve devouring every word until the wee hours I’d the morning, unable to stop but sad it’s over. Then waiting for the next one while simultaneously fighting the urge to read every book she’s ever written again. Ugh.
danicuestaa's review
2.0
It’s so funny cause I can read this and recognize how harmful this authors rhetoric is. Like it’s so blatantly white woke woman who is a reformed boomer writing this but I will read it every time.
This story is just another one of prime examples of that hehe.
This story is distinctly different from the rest because this series is focusing on a different MC that beat up a woman for spilling secrets. I think we could have gone a different route with this or used maybe ANY other plot device but hey, that’s just me. So while the MMC is “inherently male” we’re told to sympathize with him for his messed up background. That’s so crazy lmaoo.
I like the route she went for the FMC who breaks up with her boyfriend in the beginning for being a shit partner by not offering her any support and recognizes she would have a better time alone. I think we could have made this way simpler and still keep that KA enjoyable flare but a lot of her books recently feature an act of violence against women that is soon forgiven for a very shallow reason.
Will I read the next installment ? Yea probably hehe
This story is just another one of prime examples of that hehe.
This story is distinctly different from the rest because this series is focusing on a different MC that beat up a woman for spilling secrets. I think we could have gone a different route with this or used maybe ANY other plot device but hey, that’s just me. So while the MMC is “inherently male” we’re told to sympathize with him for his messed up background. That’s so crazy lmaoo.
I like the route she went for the FMC who breaks up with her boyfriend in the beginning for being a shit partner by not offering her any support and recognizes she would have a better time alone. I think we could have made this way simpler and still keep that KA enjoyable flare but a lot of her books recently feature an act of violence against women that is soon forgiven for a very shallow reason.
Will I read the next installment ? Yea probably hehe
profromance's review
5.0
Overall Grade: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Tropes: MC romance; opposites attract; romantic suspense
“You could wallow in the hurts done to you and use them as an excuse to live your life hurting other people. Or you could fight the cycle and find ways to do better.”
For almost two years now, I’ve been trying to understand the magic of Kristen Ashley’s storytelling. I thought it was due to her capacity to write meaty stories, detail after detail poured over her pages. I’ve also considered her gift at drawing characters you love from their first moment on the page. You love them; you hate them; you love them again. Maybe it’s crazy, out-of-control women or emotionally stunted, alpha males; it doesn’t matter because you can’t help but love them all. It’s even possible that it’s her engaging plotlines that hold you captive. I do believe it has to do with the communities she carefully crafts into her stories. But, after reading Smoke and Steel, her newest book, I started pondering it, and I realized that the thing I love the most about a story such as Smoke and Steel and the menagerie of other stories she’s written is the way that her stories are like our memories: nuggets of moments that comprehensively embody a life. That’s the gold, I think, of her romances. Stephen King wrote a book entitled On Writing, and the first part is called “CV”. It’s vignettes of moments in his life that forged his writerly identity. In many ways, Kristen Ashley's stories are the same: vignettes of moments in her characters’ lives that make up the totality of their story. It’s comprehensive and weighty. It allows her to weave different messages into her books. In Smoke and Steel, she interrogates the dangers of dating sites, weaponized incompetence in relationships, the generational trauma of abuse and its impact, impetuous choices, the consequences, and the need for self-forgiveness, and societal expectations about relationships and marriage. All of these points reside in one book, woven through tethered moments in the lives of her characters. And it makes it difficult to leave her books because you want more moments with them, more opportunities to get lost in their existence in the pages of a book.
For me, I picked up Smoke and Steel expecting a journey, as I always do with Ashley’s books. Since she gives so much in her stories, I’m used to needing a few days to finish them. That was not the case with Smoke and Steel. I picked it up and read it in a day and a half. I only stopped reading it for my job, but Hellen and Core were impossible to leave.
Let’s make connections. We’ve met both of these characters previously. Hellen is the half-sister of Archie, who is married to Jagger from Wild Wind, part of the Chaos series. Core is a member of the Resurrection MC. This is the MC born out of the now-defunct Bounty. We met him in Free. He and his MC still live in the shadows of their poor choice from that book.
Everything you love about Ashley’s Chaos series and her book from the Wild West MC series, Still Standing, is found in Smoke and Steel. If you’re like me and you love her gruff, delectable alpha male with a broken spirit, then you’ll fall in love with Core. He is a complex rendering, carrying two great marks of trauma in his soul, and he hides it behind an implacable wall. It’s Hellen, an independent, knows her mind and makes no excuses for it heroine, who “sees” him when she finally knows his secrets. This is my favorite romance theme: the idea that there is one person on this planet who accepts us as we are because they can rationalize our “why”. I love Hellen because she asks for what she needs, and she doesn’t make excuses for it. She doesn’t explain it away even when her “friend” criticizes her for not eating the sh*t of past men. There is so much on social media focused on the idea of men and weaponized incompetence, a loaded term. But Kristen Ashley highlights it in such a way to say, “women, don’t settle for anything less than you need and want.” And Hellen embodies this idea beautifully. It’s a heroine like Hellen that we need to read more of and view more on our screens. It’s because of her strong sense of self that she can and wants to accept Core and his past beyond any measure.
In the end, Kristen Ashley’s Smoke and Steel is pure divinity. Her capacity to remind us that there is more to people, more than what we see on the outside, that we are a culmination of our moments but that we shouldn’t be judged by just one of them is profound. It’s why I will continue to devour her books because they mirror life while also shading them in the positivity and happy endings of the romance genre. To see one’s self reflected in a story, but made stronger through the power of fiction, that’s the genius of Kristen Ashley’s books.
Tropes: MC romance; opposites attract; romantic suspense
“You could wallow in the hurts done to you and use them as an excuse to live your life hurting other people. Or you could fight the cycle and find ways to do better.”
For almost two years now, I’ve been trying to understand the magic of Kristen Ashley’s storytelling. I thought it was due to her capacity to write meaty stories, detail after detail poured over her pages. I’ve also considered her gift at drawing characters you love from their first moment on the page. You love them; you hate them; you love them again. Maybe it’s crazy, out-of-control women or emotionally stunted, alpha males; it doesn’t matter because you can’t help but love them all. It’s even possible that it’s her engaging plotlines that hold you captive. I do believe it has to do with the communities she carefully crafts into her stories. But, after reading Smoke and Steel, her newest book, I started pondering it, and I realized that the thing I love the most about a story such as Smoke and Steel and the menagerie of other stories she’s written is the way that her stories are like our memories: nuggets of moments that comprehensively embody a life. That’s the gold, I think, of her romances. Stephen King wrote a book entitled On Writing, and the first part is called “CV”. It’s vignettes of moments in his life that forged his writerly identity. In many ways, Kristen Ashley's stories are the same: vignettes of moments in her characters’ lives that make up the totality of their story. It’s comprehensive and weighty. It allows her to weave different messages into her books. In Smoke and Steel, she interrogates the dangers of dating sites, weaponized incompetence in relationships, the generational trauma of abuse and its impact, impetuous choices, the consequences, and the need for self-forgiveness, and societal expectations about relationships and marriage. All of these points reside in one book, woven through tethered moments in the lives of her characters. And it makes it difficult to leave her books because you want more moments with them, more opportunities to get lost in their existence in the pages of a book.
For me, I picked up Smoke and Steel expecting a journey, as I always do with Ashley’s books. Since she gives so much in her stories, I’m used to needing a few days to finish them. That was not the case with Smoke and Steel. I picked it up and read it in a day and a half. I only stopped reading it for my job, but Hellen and Core were impossible to leave.
Let’s make connections. We’ve met both of these characters previously. Hellen is the half-sister of Archie, who is married to Jagger from Wild Wind, part of the Chaos series. Core is a member of the Resurrection MC. This is the MC born out of the now-defunct Bounty. We met him in Free. He and his MC still live in the shadows of their poor choice from that book.
Everything you love about Ashley’s Chaos series and her book from the Wild West MC series, Still Standing, is found in Smoke and Steel. If you’re like me and you love her gruff, delectable alpha male with a broken spirit, then you’ll fall in love with Core. He is a complex rendering, carrying two great marks of trauma in his soul, and he hides it behind an implacable wall. It’s Hellen, an independent, knows her mind and makes no excuses for it heroine, who “sees” him when she finally knows his secrets. This is my favorite romance theme: the idea that there is one person on this planet who accepts us as we are because they can rationalize our “why”. I love Hellen because she asks for what she needs, and she doesn’t make excuses for it. She doesn’t explain it away even when her “friend” criticizes her for not eating the sh*t of past men. There is so much on social media focused on the idea of men and weaponized incompetence, a loaded term. But Kristen Ashley highlights it in such a way to say, “women, don’t settle for anything less than you need and want.” And Hellen embodies this idea beautifully. It’s a heroine like Hellen that we need to read more of and view more on our screens. It’s because of her strong sense of self that she can and wants to accept Core and his past beyond any measure.
In the end, Kristen Ashley’s Smoke and Steel is pure divinity. Her capacity to remind us that there is more to people, more than what we see on the outside, that we are a culmination of our moments but that we shouldn’t be judged by just one of them is profound. It’s why I will continue to devour her books because they mirror life while also shading them in the positivity and happy endings of the romance genre. To see one’s self reflected in a story, but made stronger through the power of fiction, that’s the genius of Kristen Ashley’s books.
mooncricketjp's review against another edition
4.0
Ok, I don't think this was as good as other books by this author but I still four-starred it because I couldn't put it down. I'm going to say I still loved it even though I recognized that it isn't as good (IMO). The worst thing for me, though, is that KA is seemingly lumping three MCs into one series now. Yes, I want books from all three MCs but I wish they weren't lumped together like this. Give them their own series and give us a full reading order to get the whole picture - just like with Rock Chicks, Colorado Mountain, Chaos, etc...
I am super happy that the author didn't make societal issues as big a part of this book as she has in some of her other recent releases. While I think it is important to recognize these things, and since KA has such an obviously large platform it is important for her to speak out about the things she believes in, I read these books to get away from the real world. So, seeing less in this story was great.
I am also super glad that Resurrection is getting their time and their chance. What they did, beating Rosalie, was awful, but it was fiction. However, even in real life, everyone deserves second chances. I can't wait for more...
I am super happy that the author didn't make societal issues as big a part of this book as she has in some of her other recent releases. While I think it is important to recognize these things, and since KA has such an obviously large platform it is important for her to speak out about the things she believes in, I read these books to get away from the real world. So, seeing less in this story was great.
I am also super glad that Resurrection is getting their time and their chance. What they did, beating Rosalie, was awful, but it was fiction. However, even in real life, everyone deserves second chances. I can't wait for more...