Down To Ash

Written by Melissa Blue

Narrated by Trei Taylor

She's his best friend's baby sister, and he's too broken to deserve her.

Victor Yang spent six years in the Army as a bomb tech, and when he came back from war, he was half out of his mind and completely dangerous to anyone who got too close to him. His friend saved his life, and now he's repaying that debt in the worst way possible.

He shouldn't fantasize about Ashley's touch, her taste. Definitely shouldn't act on those urges. But he doesn't half-ass mistakes. One explosive night later, he's learned how sweet her forbidden fruit tastes, and is coming back for seconds. And if his friend finds out Victor knows exactly how Ash's skin feels beneath his tongue, his best friend will kill him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094414522

Melissa Blue

Melissa Blue’s writing career started on a typewriter one month after her son was born. This would have been an idyllic situation for a writer if it had been 1985, not 2004. She penned that first contemporary romance, upgraded to a computer and hasn’t looked back since. Outside of writing, Blue works as a mail clerk for the federal government, has a paralegal certificate (that she has more use for as a dust pan) and is a mother of two rambunctious children. She lives in California where the wine is good and, despite popular belief, is not always sunny.

Reviews for Down To Ash

[AAA · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic- got all the feels! Warm/fuzzy
feels, steamy/saucy feels, I’m hugging you both feels, …

[Agda Mesquita · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Most of the story was fun and engaging, however, by the end I got the impression the author got tired of writing and just a abruptly ended the whole ordeal. Still I could have given four stars for this book, cuz it was fun to read. But the narrator was sufferable. She only had one voice didn't had a lot of inflections and didn't really seem to give any thought about what she was reading, I'm glad she doesn't read all the series.

[Virago Reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars. This was a nice listen. I kind of like the brother's-best-friend/best-friend's-sister trope. Ash was a bit of a selfish asshole, but when her true motivations became clear, it's easy to forgive her. All-in-all, it was a fun listen. They story was good, the spice was there, and the conflict was believable.

[TaShae Hedgespeth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Loved the amount of spice in this book but the story could of been more fleshed out. It was a cutesy filler book to cleanse the pallet.

[L Sharrieff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent story of long time longing and sexy angst filled love. Great job on narration too.

[Lynne Howard · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book interested me enough to read/listen to another book by Melissa Blue

[Butterbean · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story is fine. I appreciated how it touched on dealing with a loved one with PTSD. You would be better off reading this instead of listening to the audio. The narrator doesn't distinguish her voice much between characters.

[Kameel Gibson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The concept of this story was truly a good one….Porter & Vic were best friends for over 20 years since elementary school and being in love with his sister since his early teens….I’m not sure if it was the narration or the story (perhaps both, boring narration and a underdeveloped story)…the love between Vic & Ash wasn’t believable to me…I kept wishing for this story to be over…in a word…Boring. The narrator basically read the story without inflection and at times it was hard to determine which character was talking.

[Stephanie Radloff · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Didn't enjoy this book as much as the first. Didn't even finish it, found Ashley a bit annoying.

[Wendi · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really want to enjoy this story but it's so hard to follow who's speaking. The narrator makes no distinction between voices!
Isn't that rule number 1 of audiobooks *facepalm*

[Titivate Selfcare · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Found Ashley annoying + narrator was horrible! Was confused about who was talking sometimes.

[Susie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to like it. I love reading stories about women that look like me. But alas...

I read the first book in this series and thought the story was a little redundant and victim-blaming, but overall not bad. While this book had less victim-shaming, . The author writes very choppily. I think reading it myself would have been better than the audiobook. The same words kept getting used and they kept repeating the same problems as if I hadn’t just read about it. Between that and the narrator, I couldn’t fully enjoy it. Which brings me to my next point. Everything the narrator said was in a sing-song voice, the dialog was confusing because all her voices sounded the same and she kept pausing in weird places before finishing a sentence. Maybe the authors other work is better, but this? Not so much. The only thing that kept me listening was the drama of the story. That was done well and kept me interested.

[Yotaunda Sherriff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved these characters. The story is fun and sensual without anything corny or annoying. Looking forward to more of this authors work.