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A review by katyanaish
Rock Chick Reckoning by Kristen Ashley
2.0
Well, I liked this one the least.
Let me start by saying, second-chance romances are not generally my thing. It is super rare for me to like them. I think that second-chance set with in this series, with the alpha-hole guys, was probably just never going to work for me.
I struggle with the series in general, because the relationships are super 1-sided. The men dictate everything, and even when they do shitty things to the women, the women are pissed for about .005 seconds. All the men have to do is kiss them, and it is all forgiven. I've been having more and more of a problem with that as the series goes on, but that may be because I'm just blitzing through it, and so it is building up.
With this one, it's just all about Mace. Yes, he's had some seriously traumatic shit in his past, and I'm totally cutting him slack for that. But Stella has had some shit too - she's grown up with some pretty horrible abuse - and all of that gets back-burnered because the only one actually allowed to have emotions is Mace. Even when we - for about 30 seconds - address Stella's abusive parents, the scene ends up being not about Stella, but about Mace's emotional reaction to her parents.
Not one goddamn thing in this book is actually about Stella.
Even when Mace tells her that his dumping of her, a year ago, was a "test" - he wanted to see if she'd let him go ... and I have to tell you guys, that's such manipulative, abusive shit that I felt sick - she isn't allowed to have a reaction. She gets mad, and he decides that she doesn't get to be, wants to tell her something about his past, and gives her this bullshit ultimatum that she has to drop her emotional response to him (quite frankly) abusing her and listen to him right now, it's her one chance. When she doesn't immediately kow-tow, he leaves her. Again. She asks him not to - because hey, y'all, that's how emotional abuse works, you manipulate your partner out of their emotional response by just making it all about yourself, and Mace is successful because him deciding to leave her (as per his ultimatum) immediately makes Stella forget about how he fucked her over with his test (literally forget, because it is never, ever brought up in this book again) - and he does it anyway.
I really, really don't like Mace.
And you know, maybe I would have liked Mace if we spent more time working out Mace and Stella's shit, and gave some time to Stella's story so she had equal weight in this book. Because I think that's why I've been cruising through the series so smoothly up until now - even though the relationships are one-sided, the Rock Chicks have equal weight in the story, they have their own lives and their own shit and we spend time working on it. We don't do that with Stella. Any time the story is focused on her, it's her sorting through Mace's shit or figuring out how to get Mace to love her. She's so fucking 2-dimensional. If this book hadn't done that to Stella, it probably still would have worked for me.
Instead, probably about 40% of this book was about the other characters. Seriously, for the first time, we had whole chapters cut away and showing all the previous relationships. It felt like extended epilogues with Lee and Indy (and a big section of this book was about their wedding), Hank and Roxie, Eddie and Jet, Luke and Ava. And then the whole epilogue of this book was also about them. We got a millisecond of Mace and Stella.
This honestly didn't even feel like a book about Mace and Stella at all. Hell, the whole situation, unlike the other Rock Chick books, wasn't even about a problem in her life.
**1.5**
Let me start by saying, second-chance romances are not generally my thing. It is super rare for me to like them. I think that second-chance set with in this series, with the alpha-hole guys, was probably just never going to work for me.
I struggle with the series in general, because the relationships are super 1-sided. The men dictate everything, and even when they do shitty things to the women, the women are pissed for about .005 seconds. All the men have to do is kiss them, and it is all forgiven. I've been having more and more of a problem with that as the series goes on, but that may be because I'm just blitzing through it, and so it is building up.
With this one, it's just all about Mace. Yes, he's had some seriously traumatic shit in his past, and I'm totally cutting him slack for that. But Stella has had some shit too - she's grown up with some pretty horrible abuse - and all of that gets back-burnered because the only one actually allowed to have emotions is Mace. Even when we - for about 30 seconds - address Stella's abusive parents, the scene ends up being not about Stella, but about Mace's emotional reaction to her parents.
Not one goddamn thing in this book is actually about Stella.
Even when Mace tells her that his dumping of her, a year ago, was a "test" - he wanted to see if she'd let him go ... and I have to tell you guys, that's such manipulative, abusive shit that I felt sick - she isn't allowed to have a reaction. She gets mad, and he decides that she doesn't get to be, wants to tell her something about his past, and gives her this bullshit ultimatum that she has to drop her emotional response to him (quite frankly) abusing her and listen to him right now, it's her one chance. When she doesn't immediately kow-tow, he leaves her. Again. She asks him not to - because hey, y'all, that's how emotional abuse works, you manipulate your partner out of their emotional response by just making it all about yourself, and Mace is successful because him deciding to leave her (as per his ultimatum) immediately makes Stella forget about how he fucked her over with his test (literally forget, because it is never, ever brought up in this book again) - and he does it anyway.
I really, really don't like Mace.
And you know, maybe I would have liked Mace if we spent more time working out Mace and Stella's shit, and gave some time to Stella's story so she had equal weight in this book. Because I think that's why I've been cruising through the series so smoothly up until now - even though the relationships are one-sided, the Rock Chicks have equal weight in the story, they have their own lives and their own shit and we spend time working on it. We don't do that with Stella. Any time the story is focused on her, it's her sorting through Mace's shit or figuring out how to get Mace to love her. She's so fucking 2-dimensional. If this book hadn't done that to Stella, it probably still would have worked for me.
Instead, probably about 40% of this book was about the other characters. Seriously, for the first time, we had whole chapters cut away and showing all the previous relationships. It felt like extended epilogues with Lee and Indy (and a big section of this book was about their wedding), Hank and Roxie, Eddie and Jet, Luke and Ava. And then the whole epilogue of this book was also about them. We got a millisecond of Mace and Stella.
This honestly didn't even feel like a book about Mace and Stella at all. Hell, the whole situation, unlike the other Rock Chick books, wasn't even about a problem in her life.
**1.5**