Review: My first KA read!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 21, 2013
When I picked up Jagged, I knew nothing about Kristen Ashley or this series. I saw a bunch of my fellow book enthusiasts freaking out over this being released so I figured, what the heck! I’m glad I did! Jagged is the 5th book in the Colorado Mountain series but lucky for me, this is the type of series where you don’t have to read them in order and it won’t spoil the rest of the books. I’ve lived in Colorado for the past 14+ years and I love our mountain towns. I thought Kristen Ashley did a great job of creating a little town called Gnaw Bone, Colorado, with some very entertaining characters filling it. The secondary characters had me cracking up with their slang! Since I haven’t read anything from Kristen Ashley before, I went into this book not knowing the author’s writing style. After having read Jagged, I’m sure I could recognize a K.A. book without seeing the title or author page. She has a very distinct way of writing dialogue, a lot of it in clipped sentences. I’ll be honest, this took me some getting used to, but once I was able to sink myself into the story, it was just part of the characters traits and seemed natural for them to talk like that.Jagged follows the story of Zara (LOVE this name!) and Ham (short for Graham – this name threw me for a loop! Ham? I don’t quite know what to make of it.) who start off as friends with benefits and years later, come back together again. Throughout their long and complicated relationship, whether living in the same town or not, Ham and Zara have maintained a friendship and always have been there for each other. When Zara decides that it’s time to move on.. be an adult… marriage and children… she has to cut Ham loose. You can feel how much this torments her as she’s doing it but where I really saw the denial and hurt, was in Ham. You could tell he didn’t want to let go. His words said it all, even though his actions may have allowed her to walk away.Ham (despite his crazy nickname which made me picture Hamm from Toy Story) came across as this rough and tough mountain man. He’s the kind of guy that women throw their panties at and would give their left arm to get a piece of. He looks big and mean on the outside but once we get to see what his heart is made of, well, he won me over.Fast forward 3 years and a whole lot of stuff has happened to Zara. Life didn’t turn out the way she thought it would when she let Ham go. Now she has to start over, try to pick up her pieces, and make a new life for herself. And you know who… ahem, Ham, comes back to town at just the right time. The guy is smart about trying to get his Zara back. Even though some of his tactics seemed a bit farfetched, he does whatever he has to try and make sure Zara is safe, and with him.I almost felt like Jagged was two stories meshed together. We have the falling out of Ham and Zara and their reconnection, which felt emotional and passionate. I was hooked in the first part of the story – the fighting, the emotions, and their passion kept me enthralled. At one point, I thought the book was over, only to discover I was only halfway through. Then we segue into a whole new set of problems for Zara and Ham which were equally compelling. Even though the characters were all still present in the second half of the book I still felt like I was reading an extension. I’m not sure why the transition felt this way for me but it did. It didn’t stop me from reading it, because there’s a whole storyline with Zara’s family that’s pretty jacked up and made me want to punch some jerks, namely her father. I felt like the ending was a bit too perfectly wrapped up but after everything Zara had been through, she definitely deserved a happily ever after!