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My Review:Title: Raid
Author: Kristen Ashley
Series: Unfinished Hero #3
Published by: Indie
Release Date: February 25, 2013
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 282
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2023 Bookish Resolutions DTTH
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:
Blurb:Hanna Boudreaux has lived in the small town of Willow all her life. She’s sweet, cute and quiet.
Hanna has a moment of epiphany when she realizes her crush for forever, Raiden Ulysses Miller, is not ever going to be hers. She sees her life as narrow and decides to do something about it.
Raiden Miller is the town’s local hero. A former Marine with the medal to prove his hero status, he comes home, shrouded in mystery. It takes a while, but eventually Hanna catches his eye.
After all these years of Raid and Hanna living in the same town, the question is why? Is Raid interested in Hanna because she’s sweet and cute? Or does Raid have something else going on?
DNF @ chapter 14 — Should I have stopped in the first chapter when she called the girl her crush was kissing a skank because of her tight clothes, big boobs and big hair? Probably. But it was a 2013 book, and I try to remember that I wasn’t super enlightened back then either, so I kept on. And there were definitely things that pulled me in.
Let’s face it, in general Hanna is pretty cute and fun and easy to like. She’s kind, generous with her time, and gloriously dorky when she lets herself be. Yeah, definite self-esteem issues, and has fully absorbed a bunch of societal lies, but honestly that describes most of society.
Then we have Raiden. *sigh* I am not an alpha girl, let’s just get that out there right now. And did I pick this book to read for my challenge cause I’d already read another KA and figured she’s probably not for me, so I might DNF and this would be quick? Yeah, I did. And after this I think I can call it enough of a trend and remove her from my list. Raiden had some adorable moments, but mostly he was a controlling asshole who bordered on abusive to me…and I’m pretty sure it gets worse from here on out. The way he manipulates Hanna just felt icky to me…not really giving her time to make up her own mind, whilst saying she could make up her own mind.
And that moment where he quite clearly indicates he noticed her now because she got her hair cut and started “taking care of herself”? Uh no. I’m totally okay with women being into clothes and shoes and makeup and all that if it’s something they *genuinely* enjoy, but not because of some societal standard about how women should present themselves. Fuck that shit.
Also, what is with the way this author writes dialogue? I ended up being so confused. At first I wondered if it was some local cultural affectation, but honestly I think it might just be bad writing. And if I was into the kinds of characters/plots she writes, I would probably push through it, but since I’m not I’ll just dibs out.
So yeah. Definitely not a match for me, and at least now I know for sure. I can see elements of how her writing is addicting, but just not for this reader.
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