Review: Painful to read,  but not because of the spanking
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 10, 2013
I really cannot recommend His Lady Ashlynn for purchase.  For starters, you've read this plot one hundred times over:  headstrong and slightly stupid, but beautiful heroine catches the attention of stern, but passionate hero who loves her unbridled behavior, but is going to do everything he can to repress her spirit.  If you are not familiar with that plot, than perhaps you are familiar with this plot: heroine "hates" hero, but feels a strong desire towards hero who she cannot stand and is thus in a constant state of confusion about her actual feelings.  Add into these combined plots, a bizarre group of male characters (father, brother, and hero) who are always punishing or criticizing the heroine, Lady Ashylnn, but yet can't stop speaking about how much they love her irrepressible behavior.It just doesn't work: there is so much incongruous behavior and dialogue that about halfway through, I started rooting for Lady Ashlynn to get back to Virginia. As an example, her impassioned finance Blaine Wellingsworth(Duke of Ashcroft) gropes her rear-end in public at a ball and she smacks him. Blaine and Lady Ashlynn retreat to a room where they start gyrating with one another despite their mutual aggravation, but then her brother retrieves her for a spanking by her father.  Blaine then, too, starts thinking about how he needs discipline her because even though his behavior was "not proper" (this phrase is used ad nauseam throughout the novel), her behavior was SO MUCH WORSE because he is a peer of the realm (his status is also mentioned ad nauseum as if he was some decorous individual - he actually prompts much of Ashlynn's bad behavior). Blaine is basically an annoying dufus - again, I feel Ashlynn should have stuck to her guns and tried to get back to Virginia.Despite my waning interest in the story, I did actually feel bad for the Lady Ashlynn because the whole plot seemed to exist in some bizzarro world populated by very dim and irritated men who are always falling all over themselves to apologize to one another about her behavior, but who never actually seemed to think of her as anything but a caricature (albeit a caricature they are very fond of - sometimes).  In fact, it seemed like all of the characters were irritated and again, incongruous:  her whole family vacillated between yelling at Blaine for abandoning Lady Ashlynn (on two distinct occasions) and profusely apologizing to him for about getting stuck with her.  I'm not even going to get into the whole twin-sense thing that came out of nowhere at the end of novel - for 85% of the novel Abigail and Ashlynn's relationship was completely lacking in empathy and fondness (but Abigail apparently feels Blaine has some kind of uber-responsibility to be kind to Ashlynn, even if she basically has no relationship with Ashlynn besides telling her that she missed breakfast - again).I had to force myself to keep reading this novel.  Beyond the silly plot, obnoxious and schizo characters, and the boring and repetitive conversations, I'm also rather confused about how this is marketed.  Lady Ashlynn is spanked several times, but by her father!  Is that what is supposed to turn people on?  By and large, the other disciplining that occurs by Blaine is described vaguely and in retrospective (is this supposed to be part of a series?).  Ultimately, I also don't know how or why the author thought it was a good idea to spend so much of the novel with the characters at odds with one another - there didn't actually seem to be much of a romance besides Blaine saying over and over again how much he love Ashlynn with the ever-present caveat that he needed to keep her in line.If you are particularly interested in this genre, I would instead recommendLily Mine: A Historical Fantasy- it has a unique plot, endearing characters, really good writing, strong romance, and well-described intimacy.