Burn by Maya Banks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As the ending to the Breathless Trilogy, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Burn. Like the first two, I didn’t really make the connection between the title and the content of the novel. Nothing really stood out that made me think.. “OH! That’s why its called Burn“. This is just a minor detail though. The actual story itself is an improvement from the first two I think, maybe because the female protagonist, Josie Carlisle, has an actual life before she met Ash McIntyre. (See, it wasn’t that hard to make your female lead have a JOB) Josie is this vibrant, cheerful, free-spirited artist. Not a conventional 9-5 career but at least she has a passion, something that she does to make her feel independent. Bethany in the 2nd novel, was homeless so of course her circumstances were a little different so I understand why she has no means, no education, not much she can do but pick up odd jobs. Mia however, didn’t really have any excuse. She went from working part-time in a bakery to working for her would-be husband.
Josie is living and eating from her artwork and handmade jewellery. That’s pretty admirable. It’s hard to be self-employed, not really sure if you’re going to be able to make rent. Josie was refreshing in the sense she was definitely a different type of female lead than Mia or Bethany. I was also surprised by the role Mia played in this novel. She had more role as emotional support and providing relationship advice to Josie although personally, I think Josie would have been fine even without Mia’s advice. Josie’s what you’d expect your heroine to be. Smart, independent, genuine, attractive, and the kryptonite of the male lead.
Burn had its moments where I thought some scenes were a little unnecessary but those moments didn’t last long before something new developed in Josie and Ash’s relationship. If you thought Gabe/Mia and Jace/Bethany’s relationships moved fast, Josie/Ash moved at WARP-freaking-SPEED. Without giving anything away, let me just say there is no preamble. There’s not much flirting. Jumped straight into it. I was a little taken aback because I was expecting somewhat of a chase. At least a little bit.. but nope. Things escalated quickly. I can’t say the reason behind is justified but that’s just how things went, especially since Josie’s life was seemingly in danger and Ash went into overprotective caveman mode.
I finished the book in approximately 3 hours but this isn’t because I was riveted. It was interesting enough that I wanted to finish the series but I was disappointed by a couple of details so its safe to say I didn’t love it enough to give it more than 3 stars. I kind of wanted to see what happened between the side-characters Brittany (Ash’s sister) and her love-interest, Kai Wellington, the mysterious owner of the Vibe club Mia’s girlfriends frequent in each novel. But like the others, Brittany/Kai’s relationship was mentioned in passing like blips. They met, had sex, fell in love, get engaged. 😦 Brittany’s the male lead’s younger sister so I thought there was going to be more character development for her but it didn’t happen.
Anyways, the novel is about Josie/Ash so in terms of character and plot, the novel hit the basic marks I was looking for. There was relationship development, issues that they worked out, one good fight, and heartfelt love confessions. The only peeve I had was the way Ash talked. Specifically, I didn’t like the way his dialogue was structured. Most of the time, it was clipped or displayed as half-sentences, like when you start halfway through a sentence. This is more of a minor detail that became more annoying as I read on, but I do understand it’s in keeping with Ash’s barely restrained/intense/controlling personality. In the end, I enjoyed the book and Maya Banks ended the series on a good note.
3/5 stars.