Fire Inside by Kristen Ashley

Narrated by Kate Russell

Fire Inside is another in Ashley’s Chaos series and takes place about 8 years after the events of Motorcycle Man. In that story, Lanie Heron, heroine Tyra’s best friend, was shot by the Russian mafia and nearly died because her then-fiancé made some bad financial mistakes and ended up owing thema lot of money. After her recovery, she moved back to Connecticut to be near her family but Tyra has enticed Lanie back to Denver where she belongs.

Lanie hasn’t been with anyone since then and she doesn’t think she has it in her to let someone so close to her again. But she’s lonely and, at the start of the book, she propositions Hopper “Hop” Kincaid at the motorcycle club Chaos’ hog roast. Much against his better judgement – Lanie’s picture is in the dictionary under “high maintenance” – he gives in. Hop finds he’s not done with Lanie after one night. Or two nights. Or thirteen nights. Lanie is still gun-shy (heh) but Hop is persistent.

They have a rough time when some aspects of Hop’s past come out and Lanie is still trying to get over the trauma of what happened with her former fiancé and her guilt about what happened to Tyra as well. However, as Lanie gets to know the goodness that is Hop, so does the reader and he is something special, let me tell you!

In my review of Motorcycle Man, I complained (a lot) about Tack’s voice: It didn’t meet the expectations I’d formed of him from the text. When I read Fire Inside, Hop quickly shot to Number 2 position in my “Favourite Kristen Ashley heroes” list (after Tack because of course) but I had no firm view regarding what Hop should sound like. (Or perhaps it’s that Ms. Russell managed to make him sound roughly like I expected him to.) Even though Hop’s voice wasn’t super deep, it was nevertheless easy to distinguish from the other characters. Added to that, Hop has his own syntax so that in itself differentiates him.

I do think narrating a Kristen Ashley book is a bit of a challenge. Her sentence structure is somewhat unique; they’re often sprawling, long and circuitous. Therefore it’s not a surprise that, a fair amount of the time, Ms. Russell put in vocal full stops which were not where they should be. Sometimes I felt the wrong word was emphasised in a sentence, which enhanced the problem. But, for the most part, I think Ms. Russell relayed the vibe of Lanie’s and Hop’s love affair and overall, I was pleased with the narration.

I still think Tack’s voice is wrong but he doesn’t have a huge role in the story. High sounded like he’d been inhaling helium (which, if he ever gets his own book will be alarming) but Molly and Cody sounded authentically childlike, and Lanie and Hop were pretty much how I thought they should from reading the book.

I have to say that Ms. Russell excels when she voices Elvira. She just totally nails the voice and the sass and it’s hilarious in a that’s-totally-her kind of way but not in a laughing-at-her way.

Hopper Kincaid is a complete charmer and his steadfast devotion to Lanie won me over so much that I liked him even better than Shy (and I really like Shy). I loved Fire Inside when I read it and it was a happy surprise to remember and revisit all that goodness again on audio.

Kaetrin

Narration: B

Book Content: B+

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Fighting

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Blackstone Audio

Fire Inside was provided to AudioGals for review by Blackstone Audio.