Knight

Knight (Unfinished Hero, #1) 
by Kristen Ashley 

t'irla ~The BookSlayer~'s review Mar 07, 13 

Wow, A huge step away from her usual writing. For me it was a 70% adored  and 30% "what the hell"..talk about a step in a different direction.

Description:

Anya Gage has learned that to get anything good in life, you have to work for it. She has no expectations, no dreams.

Then she finds herself at a party where she doesn’t want to be and she meets Knight.

Knight Sebring knows who he is, what he wants and what he likes. And he gets it. But he never expected something as sweet as Anya Gage to wander into his bedroom during a party he did not expect to be having to borrow his phone.

Knight tries to leave Anya to the life she deserves of white picket fences and a man who watches football on Sundays – good, normal and clean. But when Anya comes to his nightclub and finds herself in a situation, he knows someone has to look after her, he can’t fight it anymore and he decides that man will be him.

Knight teaches Anya that, just as with the bad, in life you should also expect the good. And he teaches her this by giving it to her.

But Knight has a dark past and just as he desires Anya for exactly who she is, he fears when she finds out exactly the man he has become and always intends to be, she’ll leave him for good, normal and clean.

My Thoughts:


I admit I have put off reading this book for a long time based on comments fom dear friends here on GR but never one to submit completely to someone else's opinion and since I"m stuck in bed I figured it was a good time to check it out. I don't know if I am sorry I did or glad I did. 

There is so much of the book that I just adored however there is a chunk of this book that I hated so I'm confused. Let me mention at this point, I adore Kristin Ashley and also love reading erotic romance including BDSM/Lite. Ok, that information is clear. I love KA's writing style and how she creates characters that are so 'real' and easy to connect with (usually), her plots are well thought out and take the reader on a fun emotional ride. I appreciate that she wrote a disclaimer at the front of the book informing her usual readers that this series is different for her and that they may not like it. When an author steps out of their 'normal' genre or type of writing I really do appreciate knowing prior to purchase. 

 I didn't go into this book expecting Rock Chicks or Dream Man. However, the elements that I like in every KA book was in this book, this is the 70% that I adored. If I overlook a  few personality traits of the characters I really liked them and connected with them. KA has taken a "bad guy" before and made him her hero and she even left him as part of the biker underworld and it worked great. Now, moving to the 30% I didn't like...actually hated.. I totally didn't like the whole "Daddy/baby" thing..and yes it does squee me but even in my "fantasy" reading life I can't get past it...and within this novel it didn't do it for me at all. Psychologically I couldn't figure out where it came from either there was no evidence in the characters backgrounds that we were given that either had a daddy/daughter complex. I have read many books where the alpha male was completely controlling. But KA took our Knight and pushed him into 'creepyland' he was too too too much. It was uncomfortable and very stalker/mentally unbalanced and not loving.  Ido  love when an alpha male tells his mate he owns her..or she belongs to him ..that does it for me..but usually he also says that she owns him as well..I think take this out and the 3 stars would have been 4 easily. I ded feel the relationship was unbalanced. I also found in the later part of the book Knight was repetitive and I couldn't figure out  why he needed to say the same thing over again? It didn't work for me. Our Heroine Anya was a different fish all together, in the beginning of the novel KA made her seem a bit wallflowerish...and overweight...then suddenly she was this drop dead bombshell who men couldn't look away from. I know that Knight's viewpoint was very influential here but her posse told her this too. I don't' want to go too much in to Knight's background as I don't want to spoil the ending for people..but it didn't quite feel right either. 

All this being said I still really liked the parts of the characters that I didn't mention and I thought the story line was clever and different and loved how KA took a chance and stepped out of the box. So how do I rate this?? I balanced up what I liked and what I didn't and came up with 3 stars since some of the book is a 1 star for me and other parts a 5 star...this my friends was a really tough call and I think the first book that has really made me fight myself about rating it. 

Kristin my friend...what an awesome job of stepping it up and taking a different direction. I admire you as a writer and now respect you as a woman who wants to be "more". Congratulations.

I recommend this book but if you are easily freaked about control or have a very black and white opinion about "good vs bad" you may wanna give this a pass. If you want to read a good story and can put aside the 30% and look at the whole then give it a read..the 70% is so worth it. 

3 confused stars ...

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