Narrated by Kate Russell
Wild Like the Wind is book 6 in Kristen Ashley’s Chaos series and features Keely Black and Shepherd “Hound” Ironside. While Keely’s and Hound’s story mostly stands alone, I don’t think the book works on its own. There is too much Chaos history from previous books to really appreciate the stakes at play.
Black was the member of Chaos who was murdered at the behest of Crank, the then-president of the club at around the time Tack was making his move to take over the role and get the club clean. Black has been mentioned in the series all the way through as “the best of them” and was beloved. In fact, he was first mentioned in Motorcycle Man – the scales tattoo all the Chaos MC members have is, in part, a memorial for Black.
Wild Like the Wind begins, quite confrontingly, with the brothers giving Crank his punishment for ordering the hit on Black and on Hound taking out the actual killer. It’s a reminder that the club came out of some very serious stuff and even the clean Tack brought them to was borne from blood and violence. And, even though Hound was acting to avenge his brother, his actions were still uncomfortable to read.
Keely was the love of Black’s life. They were deeply in love, with two young sons when Black was taken from them. She was, of course, devastated. In the nearly 18 years between Black’s death and the present day where most of the story takes place, the club has supported Keely and her sons, Dutch and Jagger, financially and materially. Every month, Black’s share of the profits from Ride are delivered to Keely. The club, but in particular, Hound, has been there for anything she or the boys needed – from mowing the lawns, to building toys on Christmas Eve, to trick or treating on Halloween.
Hound has been in love with Keely since before Black died. He never intended to act on it and, had Black lived, would never have done so. Keely would not have looked his way in any event. However, Black did die and after many years, Keely finally awakens to what is staring her in the face. Except there is an unwritten but extremely serious code of the Chaos MC that a brother does not, ever, take up with the old lady of a brother – no matter whether there was a break up or a death.
In that respect, there are similarities to Lainie’s and Hop’s (Fire Inside) and Shy’s and Tabby’s (Own the Wind) secret relationship stories.
To balance out the violence listeners have heard from Hound, we also discover that Hound has a special relationship with his elderly neighbour, Jean. For nine years he has been looking after her. Initially this involved getting her some groceries but by the time the main action of the story takes place, it also involves personal care with things such as showering and toileting her. It sounds a bit incongruous as I type it out – and very unlikely – but in the book it works and I went with it. Jean’s and Hound’s relationship is lovely and it served to humanise Hound which was something I needed.
Keely and Hound start banging pretty early on and there is a lot of banging. It’s not really a courtship story because they already know each other and feel strongly about each other. We don’t really watch them fall in love. We see what happens after they give in to it.
The book is in two distinct parts with the first section almost entirely from Hound’s POV and the second almost entirely from Keely’s. I understood the choice because it meant that Keely’s motivations were in question and the listener was in the same position as Hound at first; not knowing clearly what Keely was feeling or thinking.
There is, of course, the obligatory black moment when things between Keely and Hound go south (this is about the transition point in POV) and Hound treats Keely quite roughly. It may be a bridge too far for some listeners; it was another discomfort for me.
Keely is a quarter Apache and leans into her Native American heritage. Unfortunately, she is described in the book as “exotic” and authors, can we please stop doing that? I’m not entirely comfortable with the Native American representation here in general.
Once Hound and Keely sort things out between them (which fortunately does not take long) the conflict is about what Chaos will do to Hound when they find out and, the ongoing series arc (which really started in Motorcycle Man) about Benito Valenzuela and the threat to Chaos. Another (former) Chaos brother gets quite a few mentions in this story too – Chew. He has the appalling habit of collecting tarantulas and even just typing that word gave me the shudders. Every time his name was even mentioned I got the creeps. I just cannot do arachnids. I could not ever watch a movie featuring this guy. Just saying.
The series arc has become overcomplicated and meandering. I can’t help but wonder if the end game wasn’t quite crystal clear at the beginning. Or, if it was, if other books have been shoe-horned into that arc to make it last a little longer than originally planned. In any event, not a lot actually happened in this book (and that includes the romance between Keely and Hound – they didn’t become, they just were).
There were, however, many things to like as well. I found myself entertained by Hound and Keely, mainly because I am a big fan of the tropes and I liked Keely very much and also because in general, Kristen Ashley’s style tends to work for me. I liked Dutch and Jagger and adored the connection they had with Hound and, as I mentioned earlier, I liked Hound and Jean together as well. There is an hilarious little subplot involving Keely’s BFF, Bev (former old lady to Boz), who is dating an insurance salesman named Tad, with, reportedly, a “little dick” and anytime that subject came up I was quite literally snort-laughing out loud.
The narration, by Kate Russell, wasn’t the smooth performance I’ve heard from her before. She seemed to emphasise the wrong words fairly often and/or end sentences too early, leaving the final word kind of out there on its own. Usually I’d say that Kate Russell “speaks Kristen Ashley” well but this time around, it felt a bit like she’d forgotten a lot of the particular syntax required.
Unfortunately, this also meant that, on occasion, some of the emotion was lost. However, overall, her dramatic tension was good.
I’ve never been a huge fan of her voice for Tack, which does not fit my understanding of the character but her depictions of Hound and Keely were pleasing enough. I was impressed by her Jean voice, which was believably “elderly lady” and the early scenes when Dutch or Jagger were children were also well done.
Wild Like the Wind is not likely to be a book I revisit. It entertained me well enough while I listened, but was a bit of a nothingburger otherwise and there were problematic elements which troubled me also.
Kaetrin
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