Review: Ashley fan votes no on condescending man, "little woman"
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 28, 2013
I am a longtime fan of Kristen Ashley but this book was very different, in not a good way, from the dozen or so of her books, including the Rock Chick series, I have read previously. In fact, the way women are portrayed in the novel is so different, again not in a good way, that I might have asked, "Who really wrote this book?" were it not for Ashley's usual terrific ability to emotionally engage the reader and to keep up the fast-paced tension.The fact is, this book gave me the heebie-jeebies.  Gone are Ashley's independent, strong-willed women and instead we have compliant women whose only abilities revolve around traditional roles---sex, cooking, laundry, and nurturing each other, their children and their macho men. The story is told entirely from the point of view of the male protagonist, Layne, who basically "rules' his woman like a right-wing fundamentalist. This may be, in part, due to the fact that the few attempts by the "?heroine?" to help catch the bad guys are half-cocked and poorly executed. (True, the Rock Chick women often are impetuous, even fool-hardy, but at least they tend to actually accomplish some things and their men respect them for their determination and courage--and their men don't try to "rule" them.)Layne's teenaged sons, who seem like twenty-first century Hardy Boys, have way better ideas about, and are more effective at, helping to catch bad guys than our "heroine," Rocky.  So, who wants romantic suspense in which even a pair of teenaged boys put the "heroine" to shame in terms of their abilities and the respect they get from the "?hero?" for their exploits?Now, I usually like Ashley's alpha males but not this guy, who really "rules" the roost, lying to, manipulating, seducing his woman, doing whatever he has to to get her to bend to his will. He repeatedly makes her  promise to be "a good girl," threatening her with a spanking if she doesn't comply. Ugh! Rocky reminded me of the wives in the old TV series, Big Love, about the submissive wives of a quasi-Mormon husband. Yick!I'm sort of afraid to try reading another book by Ashley. I sure don't want to read another story about macho supermales whose submissive, adoring women kow-tow to them.