Scan barcode
A review by gypsystar
Through the Ashes by Julia Wolf
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