Storm By Carian Cole
Storm by Carian Cole - Book 1 in the Ashes & Embers Series
Tropes: Rockstar Romance, Forced Proximity, Girl Next Door, Slow Burn, Angsty Romance, Right Person Wrong Time, Tattooed Hero, Cheating, Found Family, Series Opener
Summary:
Storm is Carian Cole's debut and the first book in the Ashes & Embers series, a rockstar romance world where the members of one band each find the love of their life in the least convenient way imaginable.
BOOK REVIEW
Four stars, and I flew through it. Genuinely could not put it down, and I want to say that upfront because the rest of this review comes with a caveat.
The caveat: there is a cheating storyline in this book, and it is not a small one. I completely understand why that has cost Storm readers, and if it's a hard line for you then it will be a hard line here.These two people meet at the wrong time in the wrong circumstances, and Carian Cole is interested in what people actually do when that happens rather than what they should do.
And the setup is so good. Forty-eight hours in the back of a pickup truck in a blizzard with a stranger is a wildly efficient way to force intimacy, and by the time they get out of that truck you already understand both of them. Storm lives up to the name: volatile, magnetic, warm one minute and unreachable the next. Our girl is not a rockstar girlfriend and never pretends to be, which is exactly why she works.
Rockstar romance is one of my favourite corners of the genre and this is a strong example of why. The band feels like a real band. The found family around them has weight. And Carian Cole writes emotional damage with the kind of patience that makes the payoff actually land instead of just arriving.
I read it fast and I liked it a lot, and I went straight on to Vandal.
“Sometimes, the right person comes along at the wrong time, and you have to just trust fate and hope it leads you in the right direction and it all evens out.”
If you love rockstar romance with real angst behind it, Storm is a brilliant place to start the Ashes & Embers series. Messy, addictive and unafraid of putting its characters in impossible positions. Just know about the cheating going in, and check the content warnings first.
