Overall Grade: βοΈ βοΈ βοΈ βοΈ βοΈ
Tropes: MC romance; opposites attract; romantic suspense
βYou could wallow in the hurts done to you and use them as an excuse to live your life hurting other people. Or you could fight the cycle and find ways to do better.β
For almost two years now, Iβve been trying to understand the magic of Kristen Ashleyβs storytelling. I thought it was due to her capacity to write meaty stories, detail after detail poured over her pages. Iβve also considered her gift at drawing characters you love from their first moment on the page. You love them; you hate them; you love them again. Maybe itβs crazy, out-of-control women or emotionally stunted, alpha males; it doesnβt matter because you canβt help but love them all. Itβs even possible that itβs her engaging plotlines that hold you captive. I do believe it has to do with the communities she carefully crafts into her stories. But, after reading Smoke and Steel, her newest book, I started pondering it, and I realized that the thing I love the most about a story such as Smoke and Steel and the menagerie of other stories sheβs written is the way that her stories are like our memories: nuggets of moments that comprehensively embody a life. Thatβs the gold, I think, of her romances. Stephen King wrote a book entitled On Writing, and the first part is called βCVβ. Itβs vignettes of moments in his life that forged his writerly identity. In many ways, Kristen Ashley’s stories are the same: vignettes of moments in her charactersβ lives that make up the totality of their story. Itβs comprehensive and weighty. It allows her to weave different messages into her books. In Smoke and Steel, she interrogates the dangers of dating sites, weaponized incompetence in relationships, the generational trauma of abuse and its impact, impetuous choices, the consequences, and the need for self-forgiveness, and societal expectations about relationships and marriage. All of these points reside in one book, woven through tethered moments in the lives of her characters. And it makes it difficult to leave her books because you want more moments with them, more opportunities to get lost in their existence in the pages of a book.
For me, I picked up Smoke and Steel expecting a journey, as I always do with Ashleyβs books. Since she gives so much in her stories, Iβm used to needing a few days to finish them. That was not the case with Smoke and Steel. I picked it up and read it in a day and a half. I only stopped reading it for my job, but Hellen and Core were impossible to leave.
Letβs make connections. Weβve met both of these characters previously. Hellen is the half-sister of Archie, who is married to Jagger from Wild Wind, part of the Chaos series. Core is a member of the Resurrection MC. This is the MC born out of the now-defunct Bounty. We met him in Free. He and his MC still live in the shadows of their poor choice from that book.
Everything you love about Ashleyβs Chaos series and her book from the Wild West MC series, Still Standing, is found in Smoke and Steel. If youβre like me and you love her gruff, delectable alpha male with a broken spirit, then youβll fall in love with Core. He is a complex rendering, carrying two great marks of trauma in his soul, and he hides it behind an implacable wall. Itβs Hellen, an independent, knows her mind and makes no excuses for it heroine, who βseesβ him when she finally knows his secrets. This is my favorite romance theme: the idea that there is one person on this planet who accepts us as we are because they can rationalize our βwhyβ. I love Hellen because she asks for what she needs, and she doesnβt make excuses for it. She doesnβt explain it away even when her βfriendβ criticizes her for not eating the sh*t of past men. There is so much on social media focused on the idea of men and weaponized incompetence, a loaded term. But Kristen Ashley highlights it in such a way to say, βwomen, donβt settle for anything less than you need and want.β And Hellen embodies this idea beautifully. Itβs a heroine like Hellen that we need to read more of and view more on our screens. Itβs because of her strong sense of self that she can and wants to accept Core and his past beyond any measure.
In the end, Kristen Ashleyβs Smoke and Steel is pure divinity. Her capacity to remind us that there is more to people, more than what we see on the outside, that we are a culmination of our moments but that we shouldnβt be judged by just one of them is profound. Itβs why I will continue to devour her books because they mirror life while also shading them in the positivity and happy endings of the romance genre. To see oneβs self reflected in a story, but made stronger through the power of fiction, thatβs the genius of Kristen Ashleyβs books.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Forced Proximity
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Professor Romance 