Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I should preface this by saying I've been a long time fan of Kristen Ashley. I went back to see how long she's been a favored author of mine and I discovered it has been nine years since I first fell upon Lady Luck, the first Kristen Ashley book I ever read. In the intervening years I have fallen more in love with her characters and compiled an unmentionable number of books, most of which I have read repeatedly. What always got me with her novels was how raw and realistic her characters felt. They were relatable and you could connect with them regardless of age, gender or orientation. Lately, though, many of her books have been a grind. Today marks the first time I officially gave up on one. Chasing Serenity is a big, fat DNF for me. I have started and stopped this book repeatedly in the last 8 days and then it occurred to me that I am hate-reading instead of simply reading for enjoyment. Chloe is one of the most imperious, self-serving, grating, pretentious, demanding and insufferable characters I can recall, all wrapped up in a giant bow of hypocrisy. This would be fine if she was the antagonist, and I was supposed to loathe her - but we're talking about the heroine of the story! By 69-percent, Chloe has "griped," "announced," "pressed," "huffed," "sniffed," "demanded," "snipped," "stared daggers," and all but stamped her feet out of my good graces. And these are verbs the author uses to describe her own protagonist! Chloe, aka "Coco" (groan), is imperious (it bears repeating), bossy, condescending and obnoxious. In my mind, this character really began to morph into a character akin to Melissa, Stu's fiancée in The Hangover (played by Rachael Harris, who is amazing at becoming a character we love to hate). In other words: insufferable. Mild spoiler: the main arc seems to be that her darned siblings just won't come to heel when she demands they feel or behave a certain way RIGHT NOW and then gets offended when they are upset by this. After all, the only valid feelings are Chloe's feelings - everyone else be damned. KA has gone from allowing the reader to unravel a character's attributes, so they can fall in love with them themselves, to just telling us what we should think. She flat out describes Chloe as "erudite," "droll," and "sophisticated," which made me laugh since Chloe doesn't seem to understand the difference between words like "inferring" and "implying," or, say, speaking in complete sentences. Chloe's repeated use of French was superficial and cringe-worthy: mon beau, chérie, etc., just comes across as a phony affectation, rather than making Chloe seem worldly and sophisticated. Then more is trotted out in the form of one-dimensional LGBTQ characters: characters who were once introduced in a rich, multi-dimensional way, like Tod and Stevie in the Rock Chicks books - whom you laughed and cried with - have become just another opportunity to throw in a token, flat, undeveloped character in order to be able to check the woke box... enter: "Tiffany, a full-figured, six foot two, heavily made-up female who was not biologically female." Sigh. I hate to say it, but this has officially become formulaic. Last, but not least, is the insufferable lecturing to the reader. Lecturing about intolerance, social media, "crushing the patriarchy", "sucking more blood from the earth to perpetuate the cataclysmic damage of fossil fuel," as they drive and jet everywhere in their luxury vehicles, the horror of referring to clothing as "plus sized", being mean to influencers, and on and on. The straw for me was when the characters became weepy and revolted at the idea of hunting. Gasp! Hunting (scream, shudder, faint) is just soooo abhorrent and uncivilized, they gasped, whilst they eat their fried bacon. Get over yourself already. Where do you think that bacon came from, a Styrofoam package? The most accurate thing I read in that book was when Chloe referred to herself as a self-centered harpy. Too bad that inner reflection lasted but a moment. At any rate, rant over. I will approach with caution any future releases, but rest assured, if you read any of KA's older books (Rock Chicks, Colorado Mountain, The 'Burg) you won't be disappointed.