Wild Wind by Kristen Ashley

Narrated by John Hartley & Stella Bloom

Wild Wind is book 6.6 in the Chaos MC series and is released under the banner of the 1001 Dark Nights brand. It is Jagger Black’s book. Fans of the Chaos series will know that Graham Black was a beloved member of the Chaos MC and was horribly murdered at a time when the club was trying to change direction. He left behind a widow, Keely (who has her own book and a second – and much longer – HEA with Hound in Wild Like the Wind) and two sons, Dutch and Jagger. Dutch had his own 1001 Dark Nights’ novella in Wild Fire, released last year in print but only last month on audio. And now we have Jagger’s story.

Jagger was only 3 when his father was killed and he therefore has little memory of him. Nonetheless, Black (as he was known within the club) looms large in all his life.

When Jagger was 16 and had just gotten his driver’s license, he went to visit his dad’s grave and there, “across the way” he saw a girl, maybe 2-3 years younger than he, at a funeral which was obviously for her mother. He writes her a note of encouragement (nothing creepy) and sticks it to the new headstone a little while later and she replies. Thereafter, they run into each other from time to time over the years, always something of a missed connection and it is a long long time before he knows her as more than her initial – “A”.

Once we are quickly caught up to now, Jagger sees “A” chasing a young boy down the street and crying “thief!” so he, of course, wades in to help. Almost from that second, Jagger and A are together. This is not really a courtship book. Both believe they are destined for each other and once they agree the time is right, they just… are.

(I was going to keep A’s name a secret here but then I got an email from the author herself – I’m on her newsletter list – and her name – Archie – is right there in the subject line so I figured the cat was very much out of the bag already.)

From the beginning of chapter 2, Jagger and Archie are together and the rest of the story is really about Jagger working out some issues surrounding the death of his father.

Most of the novella (it’s 9 hours long so this feels like a misnomer!) is told from Jagger’s POV and John Hartley narrates. He reminded me quite a lot of Lance Greenfield in cadence so those listeners who enjoyed Complicated and/or The Hook Up will probably like Mr. Hartley’s performance. His female character voices weren’t exactly stellar, but they were okay enough that I gave them a pass.

Stella Bloom only narrates a very few chapters. She’s a favourite narrator and has performed quite a number of Kristen Ashley books in the past so she is well able to slip into the rather unique style of this author. She didn’t have much work to do at all here however but what she did was to her usual good quality.

For a low angst story with lots of goodness and intimacy (and not only the sexual kind – although there’s plenty of that too) between the leads, Wild Wind hits the spot. Fortunately, it does not share the extremely problematic elements around the made up African American “language” in Wild Fire. I was also pleased to see broad gender representation. Archie has a shop and she employs, among others, a pansexual assistant and a genderfluid/nonbinary person as well. Archie’s grandfather was Black and Archie surrounds herself with people of various ethnicities, gender identities and sexualities.

At one point Jagger assures Archie that she will be accepted by Chaos but notes that they are hardly the “poster child for diversity”, given the only non-white member in the club is his own mother, who has Native American heritage. I took this as the author openly recognising the overwhelming whiteness of the club which felt new.

I suppose it could be said that the gender/sexual identity representation was a little obvious but actually it felt pretty seamless to me; Kristen Ashley routinely spends time on what everyone is wearing and usually provide lots of detail around many of her characters, not just the leads. I am always pleased to see broad representation in books where that representation is not problematic. It did not seem so to me here.  

Wild Wind is definitely more for fans of the series. I don’t think it would be a good starting point for a newbie. Most of it is essentially one big long HEA. And maybe that’s just the kind of book a lot of us need right now.

Kaetrin

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