REVIEW: Soaring by Kristen Ashley
B ReviewsContemporary / Small-Town12 Comments
Dear Kristen Ashley,
I pre-ordered Soaring and was a little bummed I had to wait a few days before I could dive in once it downloaded to my reader. Your books have become a kind of comfort read for me. I’ve a fair idea of what I’m going to get and I know I will be entertained. Of course, what makes it different than a true comfort read is that I haven’t read the book before – and as I’m not a big re-reader this is a perfect hybrid for me.
There are a lot of similarities to your work, but I find it a feature, not a bug. I know I am going to get some convoluted sentence structure which, on occasion, I may have to read more than once to understand. I also know I’m going to get wonderful female friendships, a large and loving family (either born or made) and a sense of community. Much to my surprise, it turns out those things are big attractors for me. Add to that, alpha heroes who are devoted to their ladies and to their family and, very often, to their community, and laugh out loud funny humour, well it’s not a wonder I not only pre-order your books but I actually read them too. (These days making it to my TBR is but one step in a process which most often doesn’t result in the book ever being opened.)
Soaring was an enjoyable read and had all my favourite things – the female friendships, the big loving family which only got bigger over the course of the book, the humour and the sparkle between Amelia, the heroine, and Mickey, the hero. I didn’t like it quite as much as The Will – I think Jake and Josie had a better conflict and Jake had his head up his ass less than Mickey – but it was still a lot of fun. For those who enjoy Kristen Ashley books, it’s a solid addition to her list.
Having recently read/listened to the first three Rock Chick novels, I’ve come to realise that one of the things I love best about your books is that they are so inclusive. More people are added to the family and the table gets bigger. No-one loses their seat – the family just expands and everyone is welcome. I love the magnanimousness of it. In Soaring, when Amelia first moves to Magdalene, she is alone. She is estranged from her two children because when her marriage broke down she lost the plot and became very difficult to be around. In Magdalene, she not only finds herself, she also reconnects with her children, makes fast friends with Josie and Alyssa (from The Will), renews her existing friendship with her previous BFF, Robyn, and meets Mickey and finds love and more family with him and his two children. While I don’t hold with the idea that a woman has to be married with children to achieve happiness (and I don’t think your books argue for that necessarily), I do love the portrayal of the HEA as being more than just finding romantic love. There is a holistic feel to your stories which make the HEA payoff at the end so much more fun for me.
The main conflict between Amy (aka Amelia) and Mickey is her wealth. She comes from money on both sides of the family and has THREE trust funds which mean she never has to work for cash and can buy pretty much anything she wants. Mickey is a self made man and works very hard for a boss he doesn’t like much in order to volunteer as a firefighter for Magdalene. He loves his town and his community and he has always wanted to be a firefighter. (Magdalene can’t afford to pay anyone in the fire department a wage, except for a part time salary for the Chief.) The times Mickey walked on the wrong side of the dick line were when he was stressing about Amy having more money than him and that he couldn’t give her everything she needed because of it. The notion was a little too retro (and not in the good way) for me. I’d have preferred it, I think, if Mickey didn’t come from money either. As it was, the Donovan family wealth made the conflict harder for me to buy into.
In The Will, Jake Spear isn’t rich and he works very hard to support his family. Josie is very wealthy (mostly from her inheritance from her Gran, but she wasn’t hurting for cash before then) and I don’t recall there being too many fights between them about finances. Yes, Jake (*mild spoiler alert*) thought she was out of his league but wealth was only a part of that. Perhaps I’m misremembering but it didn’t feel like it was as big a deal for them to negotiate as it was for Amy and Mickey.
Apart from the money thing, there wasn’t much keeping Amy and Mickey apart. They each had family stuff to deal with and, in Mickey’s case, work stuff, but none of those things were a huge barrier to the relationship. While I like a low conflict story every now and then, my favourites of your books tend to be where the stakes are higher.
Again I could be misremembering, but it seemed to me there was a bit of snark between Josie and Alyssa I hadn’t picked up in the previous book and it surprised me a little. Josie didn’t come across to me as quite so judgemental in her own story.
Amy is 47 and Mickey is 48 and I loved this. Being *cough* around that age *cough* myself, I find myself extraordinarily pleased that there are stories with protagonists who are my vintage and who aren’t portrayed as old. (Because I’m not old dammit.) I don’t think Soaring is inaccessible for a younger-than-mid-40s reader either.
Boston Stone turns up again and plays the one note villain – he doesn’t have much to do in the novel and he’s fortunately not in it much. On the other hand, I liked where the story went with Rhiannon, Mickey’s ex-wife. Amy’s ex, Conrad, is a complete dick but he’s mostly a good dad and I liked how that became apparent in the book. Unlike Boston Stone, Conrad had some nuance to him (mainly at the end of the story, it has to be said).
I thought there were a few loose ends – which, considering the size of the epilogue (not a complaint) is surprising. I had a couple of questions about Mickey’s future career and his firefighting role and what happened with those. This is mildly spoilerish so I will put it under a tag
Spoiler: Show
Even though Mickey occasionally annoyed me with his forays into “my dick must be the biggest dick” posturing, he also charmed me with his devotion to his children and to Amy and he earned many points from me for this:
“You’re not ready, Amy, then you decide the time. But you’re eventually gonna have to share how he got your kids from you, baby.”
I felt every inch of me grow solid and Mickey didn’t miss it, couldn’t, and his arms grew snug around me.
He also dipped his head so his jaw was no longer resting against the side of my hair and he said in my ear , “If this is not the time, it’s not. But I’ll say now, this is what this feels like it might be, you gotta learn there’s no safer place than in my arms and when you’re here, Amy,” his arms gave me a squeeze, “you can give me anything.”
Also, Amy pushed back and didn’t just let Mickey walk all over her (not that he tried incessantly or anything) and he didn’t always get his way. This is a thing I liked very much. I don’t mind an alpha hero but if the heroine is a doormat, I invariably end up hating the both of them. An alpha hero with a woman who stands her ground and pushes back is far more interesting and loads of fun for me.
While I liked The Will better than Soaring, this book still hit the spot for me and I found it easy to sink into and enjoy. It delivered for me exactly what I was expecting and after three duds in a row immediately prior, I can’t even tell you how much I appreciated that.
Grade: B
Regards,
Kaetrin
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My God you wrote this review fast! LOL
You know I loved this book, too. Also very happy to get an awesone KA. One thing that I meant to say on Twitter but didn’t have time-so, hurray, I can go on about it here-
SPOILER ALERT!
It bugged me a little that Mickey conveniently had a trust fund at the end. Prior to this he was all about how her having so much money was a huge barrier for him because he would never be able to provide for her. To be her provider. He was all “middle class guy” a contractor and volunteer firefighter. I liked this conflict and found it believeable. I got that he was in a nice house because his parents helped him out with it. So that made the money conflict believable, too. But then, in the end when he easily decides he’ll go ahead and take his $15 mil!!!. Hello? How the heck did he have a leg to stand on, that whole time he was going on about her being rich and him not so they wouldn’t work, and how he was on a “budget”, when all along he was a rich guy, just choosing not to take his money yet.
It was a bit of a bummer for me. Remember that historical where the hero was a rat catcher and in the end, surprise, he’s a Duke? This felt like that.
I enjoyed this book but every time Amy’s full name was used, I was pulled out of the story, because Amy’s full name is Amelia Hathaway.
For me, that name will always belong to the heroine in Lisa Kleypas’ Mine Till Midnight, the one who had the yummy Cam Rohan as her hero.
Luckily, Amy’s full name wasn’t used too, too often, but I still hated it.
@Carolyn: Oh yeah! That’s right. There was a tugging at my memory while hearing that name, but I couldn’t place it.
I love that KA has so many heroines in my age bracket. There is love after 40 in her world – that’s so refreshing to read! Soaring was a good read. It didn’t live up to my all time KA favourites like Sweet Dreams, but it delivered all the good stuff you expect in her books (as well as the not so good). In addition to the money issue, there was another scene that really bothered me. Minor Spoiler Alert: I didn’t like the scene where Amy almost sent the kids home to their dad for the Thanksgiving fiasco. The scene works itself out differently but I didn’t buy that after all the work Amy had done to win her kids back, her first impulse when things got ugly would be to send them back to their dad’s. That idea really clashed with the message she kept trying to deliver to her kids that her house was their home. The whole scene struck me as a sloppy way to work in that confrontation with Conrad. But yeah, didn’t stop me from gobbling up the book.
@Carolyn, I also love Amelia Hathaway, Cam Rohan and Lisa Kleypas!
@Danie: I felt the same way! I thought that was a weird consequence. It DID clash with her telling her son later that her house was his until the day she died. It didn’t ring true- like a good decision to me either. Thanks for pointing that out.
@Michele Mills: I completely agree – what bugged me (if I’m remembering right) is that Jake didn’t bang on about money all the damn time and he actually was a working/middle class dude. Mickey had a chip on his shoulder about it but he came from money and had it readily available!
@Carolyn: I haven’t read the Kleypas so I didn’t make the connection. (I’ve read very little Kleypas – don’t hate me!! :D)
@Danie: Yeah, I can see that. I think you’re right there. At the time I was reading I think it was because Amy was making the point to Mickey and his kids that she did not approve of her children’s behaviour and she wanted them to stay so that meant the kids had to go.
Frankly, I can’t see any of them sitting down to a fun Thanksgiving dinner if Amy’s kids had gone back to their dad’s or if they’d merely been sent to their rooms. Either way it would have been awkward.
I am *very glad* however that the story didn’t go down the track of Auden liking Ash romantically because: step-siblings!
**SPOILERS**
I didn’t like this one anywhere near as much as I liked The Will, or any of Ashley’s previous books. There was Mickey’s surprise(!) trust fund. And I agree with Jane … if the roles had been reversed, if Mickey had been the one with the big bucks, Ashley wouldn’t have felt any pressure to give Amelia money of her own the way she did Mickey. But the big sticking point for me was Amelia, and how we were supposed to forgive all the damage she did to her children, as well as her ex and his wife, just because the ex cheated on her. We were told not only to forgive Amelia, but to blame it all on her ex, Conrad. I couldn’t buy that. Divorce happens. Spouses cheat. Get over it already! You can be pissed at him, but there is no excuse for “drama queening” all over your children’s lives. I found Amelia rather weak and uninteresting.
Ashley is one of my favorite authors, but this wasn’t one of my favorite books. I re-read The Will right after I finished Soaring, to remind me what a great story reads like! :)
@DBReynolds: I agree with you on Mickey having money too. That seemed unnecessary to me but I had a different issue (when I say issue that makes it sound bigger than it was… niggle) with the Amy was a bad ex wife deal. I was hoping she’d been really bad and KA would redeem her throughout the book. But it turned out that her behaviour wasn’t so bad as she thought (though I note she always took full responsibility for it regardless) and that most of the bad behaviour was on Conrad’s side of things. I’d actually be interested to read a book about Jake’s ex-wife because her behaviour has been shitty and I’d love to see KA redeem her.
Loved your review, pretty much everything I want to say about this book. The only thing that made not enjoy it as much I enjoyed The Will, was Mickey. Not much because of the money thing, but because of him as hero.. I don’t know, but he didn’t appeal to me as Jake or others KA heros for the matter. He was a bit stiff and not as approachable as a regular KA hero. But I loved how this book was family oriented, loved it.
@Gisele Pinheiro: Thx Gisele :) I ended up liking Mickey but I do prefer Jake. Definitely looking forward to Coert’s book! :D
Great review! And Yes to all of the comments above. I love KA with very few exceptions. She is a master at creating small town life that is not only hilarious and heartwarming, but heartbreaking as well. I want to live in these towns and hang out with these people! She can ramble but I find it to be very stream of conciousness yammering that many of us participate in with our own girlfriends. So I can relate. Lol. And best of all, she’s damn good at writing hot, sexy men.
@Deb: Thx! :)