REVIEW: Finding the One by Kristen Ashley
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Dear Kristen Ashley,
The River Rain series has been a bit of a mixed bag for me overall and Finding the One, book 7, was that all in itself. Overall, I count it a win but there were some things that didn’t work for me and one or two which did more than that. I’ve been finding a lot of comfort in re-reading Kristen Ashley books (or re-listening as the case may be) over the past few months and it was nice to read a new release to break things up a bit. I got a lot of the same things out of the experience, although I don’t know this is one I’ll revisit often or at all, unlike (many) others of hers.
Blake Sharp is the heir to the Marchioness of Norton and the sister of Alexandra (from Taking the Leap). In Alex’s book, we met Blake when she was preparing for her wedding to Chad. Chad was a cheating cheatypants and Blake was a mean girl. Blake and Alex’s mother, Helena, was the OG mean girl though and treated both her daughters very poorly. Alex escaped. Blake, in an effort to be who Helena wanted her to be, modelled herself on her mother. She was not happy and it showed. Blake did not marry Chad. She dumped him at the altar with a ranty speech which went viral.
In the intervening years, Blake has reinvented herself. She’s stepped back from her mother, become close with her sister and her dad (her parents are divorced) and involved herself in doing some interior decorating for friends and family, becoming a gourmet cook and getting more involved in charitable work. She runs her father’s many homes to help things go smoothly for him. As Finding the One begins, Blake has done the planning for Alex and Rix’s wedding, a wedding Helena wanted to be a certain way and which Alex very much did not. Alex is a very low-key girlie and doesn’t enjoy the spotlight. Blake has done her very best to make the day go perfectly so that Alex is not stressed or overburdened and has the wedding she desires.
Helena, as she is wont to do, throws a spanner in the works at the rehearsal dinner by inviting the Wallace family – Balfour (Bally) and Kenna and their two children, Davina and Alisdair (Dair). Dair is three years Blake’s senior at 38. They grew up together but haven’t really gotten along and have had little to do with one another as adults. Dair is a former professional rugby player and a current sportscaster, calling matches all over the UK and Europe and is based in Edinburgh. Blake mainly lives in the United States, notwithstanding that she has various family properties in England. But the problem with them being there is that Bally and Helena have been having an affair for years and years. Having Kenna, Bally and Helena in the same room during Alex’s wedding celebrations is not conducive to her having the day Blake has planned.
Unsurprisingly, everything goes pear-shaped and Blake has a big falling out with her mother. Kenna tells Bally she’s had enough. Blake strives to keep the fallout far away from Alex and Rix. Dair is furious with his father and worried for his mother.
But, Dair is also seeing Blake as an adult and he very much likes what he sees. He decides there is something to be explored. Over the next few days of his visit to Arizona, he makes that clear to Blake. Blake is hesistant. She still thinks of herself as a not-nice person and worries what will happen when Dair works it out. Nonetheless, Dair is persuasive and Blake really wants to try and see where things go to, so she agrees to go to Edinburgh to spend some time with Dair in Scotland in a couple weeks’ time and continue to explore what’s between them.
Both Blake and Dair are ludicrously wealthy, with rich and elite friends so it’s distance rather than money which is a potential barrier for them. Still, given Blake has interests in England, the distance is not insurmountable.
Dair has his own baggage from a former marriage and this has an impact on how he sees Blake once he finds out some of her history. I both did and didn’t have sympathy for him here, in the end landing on he ought to have known from the reaction of his friends and how he and Blake were together and how Blake and Alex were together, that Blake was exactly how she appeared to be to him and was nothing like his ex-wife.
The English nobility stuff and the being friends with the richest man in the world (Hale Wheeler from Fighting the Pull) and the obscene amount of money Blake has, was a bit over the top and in the current political climate less enjoyable than it might otherwise have been for me, but I knew what I was signing up for with a River Rain book.
There is an author’s note at the beginning which discusses the choice she made with Dair’s dialogue. He’s Scottish and she wanted to convey that in the book but did not want to be obnoxious and go full “Och McLassieland” on it (my paraphrase). Readers will have their own take on whether or not she succeeded in that. For me, I did not need as many “didnaes” and “lassies” to remember where Dair came from and found it a bit distracting over the course of the book.
Dair is bossy, which is not unusual for a Kristen Ashley hero. But he crossed the line for me in a couple of sections where he did things like snap his fingers at Blake to get her to put her foot up on his knee so he could take her shoe off for her, or pointed at a seat he wanted her to sit in (next to him). It felt too much like he was treating her like dog. Even though he was being bossy/sexy and even semi-sweet in the ultimate action/goal, his method drew a “oh hell no” from me occasionally. Blake is no pushover though and held her own. I did think the finger snapping deserved much more than an eye roll though.
I did like the way the author redeemed Blake’s character, provided context for her past behaviour and showed that she truly had changed her ways. And I liked that Dair took responsibility for his fuck-up with Blake even if he was super bossy about it. And I liked Dair’s dog (of course).
Many of the River Rain crew appear in Finding the One and over the so-far-seven book series, there are a lot of characters to remember, so that’s a thing which could be a plus or a minus, depending on your perspective. Once I remembered who everyone was (well, mostly), I was fine with it. I want to note also that the book is a straight up contemporary, with no suspense subplot so, it’s different to a series such as Rock Chick or Dream Man for example. Nevertheless, Finding the One has much of the signature Kristen Ashley vibe. Not surprisingly, they were the parts I liked the most.
Grade: B-
Regards,
Kaetrin
