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A review by salimah
The Time in Between by Kristen Ashley
3.0
This book is about 200-250 pages too long (approximately—I listened via audible), but the premise is engaging and emotionally resonant. Love a credible second chance/tortured back story— lots of that here. I’m giving it only three stars mostly because this book stayed too long at the fair. After a while it seemed that things kept happening just so things could happen...
The principals had mostly themselves to get over once back in each other’s orbit. There’s little in the way of outsider attempts to undermine them romantically, though there is a quickly resolved problematic element via a villain from their shared past.
This is such an improvement over KA’s Complicated, which went out of its way to make the male protagonist’s ex so awful that her children swore immediate allegiance to his new woman. I found the central couple to be so unrootable because of this in that one that I couldn’t even finish it. I mention that here because there are some similarities via the hero’s profession and children/family entanglements from previous relationships.
This one does feature a reformed problematic ex, but most of her evolution is already in place by the time the story starts. I love that the narrative has her firmly in the past by the time we come into the action and that the author doesn’t build up her heroine at this woman’s expense. The heroine is rootable on her own without making this woman irredeemable. But the ex does have to deal with the reverberations of her past actions in a way that is satisfying.
I could not get past the bequeathing of a woman to a man, so The Will was a non-starter for me. I say this to say this is the only book of the Magdalene series I’ve read. I don’t plan to read the second book either.
The principals had mostly themselves to get over once back in each other’s orbit. There’s little in the way of outsider attempts to undermine them romantically, though there is a quickly resolved problematic element via a villain from their shared past.
This is such an improvement over KA’s Complicated, which went out of its way to make the male protagonist’s ex so awful that her children swore immediate allegiance to his new woman. I found the central couple to be so unrootable because of this in that one that I couldn’t even finish it. I mention that here because there are some similarities via the hero’s profession and children/family entanglements from previous relationships.
This one does feature a reformed problematic ex, but most of her evolution is already in place by the time the story starts. I love that the narrative has her firmly in the past by the time we come into the action and that the author doesn’t build up her heroine at this woman’s expense. The heroine is rootable on her own without making this woman irredeemable. But the ex does have to deal with the reverberations of her past actions in a way that is satisfying.
I could not get past the bequeathing of a woman to a man, so The Will was a non-starter for me. I say this to say this is the only book of the Magdalene series I’ve read. I don’t plan to read the second book either.